


Let My Mind Reset

by GayChaton



Series: CRITICAL STRUCTURE CORRUPTION [2]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dissociation, Family Feels, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Magic, Memory Loss, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2020-06-25 16:54:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19749871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GayChaton/pseuds/GayChaton
Summary: Weeks and months fly by past Thomas and he smiles and carries on as best he can.Sure, he's talking to himself far too often, and drinking a little too much, and spacing out annoyingly regularly, and okay maybe he's losing track of time faster than he cares to admit. It doesn't much matter that he doesn't see his friends more than he needs to because he knows they might notice how miserable he is, nor does it matter that he's avoiding them because he can't stomach lying to them. Maybe, perhaps a little, it matters that he doesn't have the slightest clue how to get better.But he's managing it. He just doesn't know what to do.





	1. diatonic scale

Thomas tries very hard to keep a positive attitude.

He tries his best to ignore the bad mood he’s in. Tries to convince himself it’s just another funk; another seasonal mood swing. Winter’s been difficult, but he’s sure that the best cure for it is an optimistic spring. The restlessness is almost so palpable it crawls under his skin. He takes a big breath and sits down and gets back to work and tries to overcome it with determination. It works sometimes.

The sides don’t tell him much about what happens within his head.

Roman talks the most about what’s happening, though. It’s probably just his venting, but it’s the only way Thomas gets news. He says Virgil’s being prissy and babying Deceit. He says that Logan’s getting more pissed than anyone about Deceit’s bad habits. He says Patton’s getting ill and has to stay in his room away from Deceit in case the corruption gets to him. He says Virgil’s been fusing with Deceit to make Thief, and that it’s making Thomas afraid to talk to his friends. Roman has a lot to say when nobody else does; maybe it’s because that gossip is what keeps _him_ from blowing up.

When Thomas does see them, they’re all a little worse for wear. They glare at each other when they’re not making small talk about what Thomas should do or eat or plan. It sets a tone that Thomas doesn’t like.

Thomas wears long sleeves as his shoulder heals.

* * *

“We need to stop lying,” Virgil grits out from between his teeth, staring pointedly out the window.

Thomas takes a deep breath and keeps his eyes focused on pouring out his cereal.

“They’re going to start noticing,” Virgil says. “If they haven’t _already_. Keep avoiding your friends and they’ll stop trying. Terrence hasn’t been calling too often.”

“Terrence is back to school. Winter break only lasted so long and spring break’s only a couple days. That’s not his fault,” Thomas retorts.

“Joan’s noticed we’re not hanging out with people. They know us better than anyone. They’re _going_ to call you out.”

“So we call up Valerie or Dom and meet up and mention it and they’ll get off our back,” Thomas says. “This doesn’t have to be so complicated, Virge.”

“If we meet, they’re just gonna’ ask us how we are. And then we have to lie about that.”

“Well, you’re always saying Joan will see right through us if we lie to _them_ , so I think Valerie’s better option,” he huffs. “I _really_ _am_ trying to look out for you. So we lie to someone who might not notice, and then _eventually_ we tell Joan the truth and everything’s okay. Plus we get to hang out with someone.”

“We could just fix this if we get the others to see—“

“Not now, Virgil. He’s causing too many problems.”

“He is a problem. He won’t stop being a problem until we talk about it though. This is how it gets out of hand.”

“I said, not now.”

“This isn’t going to get better—“

“Stop being a nuisance, Anxiety!” Thomas barks.

Virgil’s silent.

Thomas sighs. “I’m sorry. Virgil. I didn’t mean that. You’re not… I know you’re pointing out potential problems to avoid. It just feels like you’re pitting me against the others. I _hear_ you. We’ve gone over this before.”

“I can’t just stop doing that,” Virgil responds. “It’s my job. It’s who I am. Take it or leave it, Thomas.”

Thomas picks up his bowl and closes the cabinet a touch too hard. “Fine. I’m _taking_ it. But _stop_ grilling me about Deceit, Virge. I’ll get to it. Let’s make it through the end of week the week first.”

“Uh…”

“ _What_?” Thomas snaps, jerking his head back to look at Virgil.

Virgil meets his gaze without a flinch and with a brow furrow of concern. “We already finished the week. It’s Monday morning.”

* * *

He’s cleaning up his kitchen counters, preparing for Dom to come over and marathon some Soul Eater. He’s alone for the moment, or at least, he thinks he is.

“I am odious to point this out, Thomas, but you need to take out the trash,” Logan says suddenly in the back of his mind.

Thomas almost jumps. He glances up at the ceiling, mumbles a quiet ‘oh lord’ and turns his gaze to the trashcan. “Logan, I’m pretty sure it’s not even half-way full.”

“Yes indeed. While I am loathe to waste the bag’s full potential, the odors of its current contents are extremely humectant and simply not a habitable environment for entertaining guests.”

“… what?” Thomas asks.

“It smells awful.”

Thomas’s face scrunches up and he walks over to open it slightly and peer inside. Sure enough, the distinct fragrance of red wine wafts up instantly. Past the tissues and paper towels that he’s thrown away in his recent tidying, he can see the neck of a presumably empty bottle. Or rather, mostly empty. Some of it has soaked into a leftover slice of quesadilla, making what could possibly be the worst smell of the year so far. “When did I finish that?”

“Last night, I presume,” Logan answers. “I wasn’t quite paying attention, since it’s not typically an indulgence of mine. It is not my responsibility, for once.”

Thomas pulls his lips tight. He didn’t think he’d gotten blackout drunk last night, but it adds up. Missing alcohol, missing memories, and a dull headache. “I guess you’re right; I’ll toss it out and spray some air freshener. Sound good?”

“Fantastic. And Thomas?”

“Mm?”

“It is within your abilities to override the compulsions of any of your sides. You can take control. That is to say, were you to confront Deceit and set distinct parameters, you could likely, for a short time, force him to stop lying, and thus stop making you lie.”

“I can do that?”

“Of course. The courtroom did that for you automatically, but you can consciously force his hand. There’s always the chance it won’t go your way, though. In the future, do try to lie cleanly if you must. You cannot keep calling upon me to explain away your verbal missteps to suspecting aquaintences.”

Thomas sighs deeply, but he knows that Logan’s already gone. He pulls the trash bag out of the can and slams the lid down.

* * *

Roman pops up in his bedroom and sprawls across the far end of the bed. Thomas makes himself stop scrolling through tumblr and sit up by propping himself against the headrest.

“I _can’t_ believe them.”

“What happened?” Thomas asks curiously. He’s feeling a little better right now, but even more so now that Roman’s arrived. The prince still pops in to give drama updates, which is increasingly valuable with how much everyone is loathe to talk about it - except Patton, who remains resolutely restricted to his room. Roman still won’t tell him why exactly why Patton’s so sick. That is, until—

“Patton fused with Deceit.”

“Wait _what_?!” Thomas asks. His phone drops with a thud to his mattress as his hands come to grasp at his chest. “Isn’t that a very _very_ bad thing? I thought Patton was getting corrupted! Shouldn’t he stay away from Deceit?”

“Well, we may have been over-exaggerating that a tiny bit. Deceit’s not corrupting him, per say. Patton’s just been so _moody_ lately! And you know him; he’ll never _ever_ let himself show anyone else that he’s not at his very cheeriest. We could hardly get him out of his own room. So I believed, but Patton’s wanted so badly to come out and help Deceit that he snuck out to have a _whole_ _rendezvous_ , apparently, because next thing I know, Mercy is sitting in the common room! I would argue that such dramatics could be avoided if Deceit fused with Virgil, right? Apparently _my_ opinion is for naught here, though. They have made up their mind.”

“Woah,” Thomas says.

“Right? Even so, Virgil’s still being a _huge_ d—“

“ _Hey_ now,” Thomas interjects. “Make like a barbershop quartet lyric and turn that almost-swear around.”

“… downright bummer. He’s supposed to be our protector, no? Or at least I thought so, but he only ever glares at anything that moves and grumbles about getting back to Deceit. That is, when he even bothers to show up in the first place!”

“Maybe he thinks Dee needs protection right now. He’s probably just trying to make sure you guys don’t break into a big fight.”

“Probably so, actually! But not from us. I’m not fighting him, neither is anyone else. Even Logan hasn’t been yelling ‘falsehood’ whenever Deceit speaks up. We’re all cool about it, right? No, the true adversaries to our yellow-clad side are Virgil himself and sleep deprivation. Dee’s looked like a hot mess for the last however-long. Which, I suppose, is what Patton is been trying to help with. Can’t sleep in his own room so he sleeps in Virgil’s. Which, I’ll tell you, Virgil hates more than making phone calls. When it gets bad, the two of them have to fuse into Thief to sleep in Thief’s room. See, Virgil’s room is upstairs and Deceit’s is downstairs so when they fused…”

“Their room went in the middle?”

“Exactly. Right where your closet should be. Which is what Mercy is doing now.”

“Cool,” Thomas breathes. It’s refreshing and somewhat nostalgic to learn something fascinating about the way the fusions work. “Y’know, this all used to be really exciting. Seeing new fusions and all? Now it’s always just scary or upsetting.”

“That might be because of how we see it,” Roman frowns. “None of us have had fun fusing lately. And if we don’t have fun, why on Earth would _you_?”

Thomas averts his gaze to the window. What can he say to that? He’s being presented an undeniable truth. When his internal personality facets are telling him he’s unhappy, how can he sit there and pretend like he’s fine? It’s a slap in the face, even if it’s a necessary one.

“Thomas?”

“Just thinking too loud, sorry.”

Roman frowns. “Might be Virgil’s fault. Shall I go check on him?”

“Or it could just be me,” Thomas says.

“What’s the difference?”

Thomas freezes in place. A good question he can’t answer immediately. If Thomas is anxious, then it’s his anxiety’s fault, right? So why does he feel such a gut reaction saying it has nothing to do with Virgil? Why is there something nagging at the back of his mind, insisting that Virgil is his own person?

Across from him, Roman sighs and softens his eyes. “Listen, I’m sorry. I oversimplified. I know you _are_ happy sometimes. Such as at Christmas with the Sanders family and that lovely dinner you shared the other week with Talyn and Joan? It’s not that I’m saying you’re falling into an utter pit of self-loathing or anything. I’m just getting increasingly worried about everyone.”

“I thought you were mad at everyone.”

“No! Yes? I don’t _know_ anymore. _Yes_ , I’m mad that everyone seems to refuse to work this out so we can get back into the flow of things where our normal is happy, but I’m more _worried_ because everyone’s getting upset, which causes everyone to close off. We need to break out of it before we start really taking a toll on your health,” Roman frowns. There’s a moment where he just presses his face against the bed comforter, sighing into the fabric. “Alright. Back to the grind.”

“Have fun.”

“See you next time, Sir Thomas,” Roman says, waving as he sinks down right through the bed.

He’s not overly fond of the fact that he’s become a regular audience to Roman’s venting, but Thomas can’t exactly say he’s not enjoying hearing it. Anything to hear about what’s happening in his head.

* * *

He’s listening to Valerie talk about new casting opportunities while they sit at a small round table at a local coffee shop.

”Enough about hypotheticals, though, _ay_ , _dios_ _mío_. How about you? Any auditions? You’re not in any shows right now, are you?” Valerie asks, excited and chipper as usual.

“No, uh, I’m still on a break from that,” Thomas says sheepishly.

Valerie smiles. “Working on videos, huh? I understand. Much bigger audience these days.”

Thomas nods, confirming her assumption. He wasn’t, really. Only enough so that Joan and Talyn wouldn’t think he was just sitting at home doing nothing. He really had been trying to get things done, but sometimes entire days would just slip by on autopilot before he even realized it was gone. He raises his bagel up and takes a bite.

“You’re doing alright though?” Valerie inquires, raising her eyebrows.

He tenses, suddenly aware that he’ll have to answer that once he’s done chewing his food. His teeth go through the motions as his mind secretly reels. His face is kept perfectly nonchalant. Eventually, he swallows and the words that his mouth speaks are the same ones it has been repeating to everyone. “Yeah, I’m doing great! Weather’s making my mood go bad though. Right in that soft spot between winter and spring where I can’t wear winter sweaters, but it’s all rainy and junk.”

Valerie nods, perfectly understanding. “Seasonal mood swings are some rough patches. Just remember that the summer is on it’s way! In all its sweaty, hurricane-filled glory.”

“Hah, of course! Maybe some year I’ll get the dexterity to wrap presents all pretty.”

“It wouldn’t be so charming.”

“But think of the photo opportunities!” Thomas’s mouth says, cheerful and excited in a way that he can’t internally muster. He’s extremely grateful that his mouth works so fast and without his direct input. Thomas chalks it up to his improv skills.

Valerie chuckles across the table and sips at her mocha. “I would take the cute messed up wrapping paper over an instagram post any day.”

Thomas’s mouth giggles right back. “If you say so, kiddo.”

Valerie’s face slips into amused confusion. “… Did you just call me ‘kiddo’?”

And suddenly Thomas snaps back into the moment and his mouth no longer speaks for itself while he sits back and enjoys time with his friend. He forces his mouth to open, but he can’t think of a thing to say. “I… uh. … I guess I did.”

“You crazy, man,” Valerie says, chuckling with furrowed brows. “You’re just goofy all the time, Thomas!”

“That’s not my…” but then he slows down, thoughts stalling. He’d been about to say that that wasn’t his name. _Obviously_ , it was. His name’s Thomas. Duh. So _why_ —

“Can’t even finish your jokes? Maybe you’re just losing your tough,” Valerie says.

“Yeah,” Thomas grins wide, trying to make it seem real. “Scatterbrain today!”

If Valerie noticed his freak-out, she gave him the courtesy of not mentioning it. As another actor, she probably did. But Valerie was always kind, even to a fault occasionally. So she took a sip of her coffee and glanced out the window. “So, what’s your plan for spring?”

He spaces out, rattling off his plans automatically. He slips a little out of focus and then he finds that his mouth is taking the reigns again because his mind has clocked out.

He blinks and then he’s standing in his doorway.

He groggily looks around and watches a car drive away down the street from his own driveway. He’s holding a takeaway bag from the café in his hands, but he can’t remember getting anything to go. He can’t remember getting home, if he drove or if Valerie drove or if they got an Uber. He can’t remember saying goodbye to Valerie in the first place, even though he must’ve.

He can’t remember much, actually.

* * *

“Tell me what’s happening,” Thomas grits out.

He’s summoned Deceit and Deceit alone to his room, and now the side stands at the foot of his bed while he sits on the edge. He’s just so tired of forgetting where he is and what he’s doing and saying things he doesn’t think he usually would. And on top of that, he’s angry. Thomas Sanders! Angry! He never thought he’d see the day where he was genuinely upset for longer than a day or two, but the past week has been nothing but gritted teeth and frustrated groans. It’s time to take Logan’s advice and get to the bottom of things.

So he looks up and stares Deceit in the eye. “No half-truths. That’s an order, mister. Tell me what’s going on.”

Deceit frowns deeply and shudders, as if the command’s had a physical effect on him. He doesn’t let it show for long though, as he rolls his eyes. “Contrary to popular belief, it’s not my fault.”

“Oh, please enlighten me, then,” Thomas says. “Whose fault is it?”

“I’m afraid that’s a simple question with a very, very complicated answer, Thomas. You sure you want to know what you’re dealing with, or would you drop it and work on calming down?”

“I am so sick and tired of pushing my _friends_ away because I don’t want to worry them. I want this all to stop. I want to work on helping myself think things through so I can come to peace with myself. I want to fix this, and I’m pretty sure what’s causing all of this is happening because of you.”

“Of course it is,” Deceit says flatly, pouring sarcasm into his cadence thick as syrup. “It’s all just because I showed up.”

“Not you. You. The sides. _All_ of you, you’re just… you’re not fighting, but you’re glaring at each other every day and I don’t know _why_. Why can’t we just get together and talk?”

“Oh, let me think. Maybe, for the first time, we all know for certain it’s our fault and not yours. You can’t fix this, Thomas, it has to be us.”

Thomas pauses, frowns, and looks down. He doesn’t know what to do to make this right. If that’s the case, then he doesn’t have a say in any of—

Wait.

“You’re all in my head. You’re imaginary. Why can’t I fix it?”

“Oh, Thomas. It’s kind of _sweet_ how you still try to convince yourself that’s true.”

Thomas’s mouth went dry. “What did you say to me?”

“Come now. I dread to imagine you legitimately being too dimwitted to understand me. Sure, we’re still imaginary friends, just like you’re still a chemical engineer and you’re feeling satisfied in life recently. Do you not think it’s time to _stop_ this game of keep-away? Virgil said you should figure it out on your own, but truly, the detour’s circumstances are more stress to you now than they would be if we faced it head on. So, I’ll play nice and give you all you need to draw your own conclusion. Am I your imagination, or a hallucination?”

“I—“

“Are your moods reflected by us, or does seeing us emotional make _you_ empathetic?”

“No. I’m—“

“Can you tell me honestly that I’m not real at _all_? Or will you admit that you should probably see a psychopharmacologist?”

“We’re done. Get out.”

“Thomas I’m simply—“

“Get _out_!”

Deceit’s teeth clack shut. “…Of course. It’s not like you _asked_ me to tell you what’s happening or anything.”

“Just go,” Thomas whispers, balling his hands into fists.

The dark side is gone before he has any chance to ask any more questions. Thomas can’t decide if he believes Deceit was telling the whole truth. Actually, he never figures that one out.

* * *

He’s alone.

Well, not really. He can feel the others slightly in the back of his mind, distant and tucked away. They fade into white noise if he lets them. But, no matter how long he puts them of, they don’t stay tucked away forever. He doesn’t have a choice in the matter.

He needs to talk to someone who exists in the real world.

Thomas picks up his phone and texts a friend.

Half a minute later, he gets a call.

Just like he’d requested via text message, it’s Talyn on the other end when he picks up. “Hey, Thomas. What’s up? You said you need to tell me something?”

“I think I need to see a doctor. I‘m gonna schedule an appointment within the month, and I need you to hold me to that so I don’t chicken out.”

Talyn doesn’t respond immediately, but when they do, their voice is soft and gentle and so very kind. “Yeah, sure Thomas. Is everything okay?”

“We’ll see, I guess.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this fic is a hard turn in terms of genre, for which I apologize, but the content matter should hopefully be of the same dramatic caliber? And since I feel bad about the definite lack of fusions in this series which was founded on fusions, I will also be posting fun little fusion combos in the notes of every chapter. Strap in kids, we’re driving towards Neurodivergent Country with a hefty load of projection and angst in the trunk.
> 
> Fusions:  
> Patton + Deceit = [Mercy](https://ibb.co/RckgL5C)  
> Roman + Deceit = [Delusion (modern attire)](https://ibb.co/sF23pmd)


	2. deadly sins

“Is Deceit allowed to lie to me when I tell him not to?” Thomas asks to no-one in particular.

“Probably,” Roman says somewhere behind him. “I mean, if you _told_ him not to, that’s like a command spell. And you’re allowed to resist spells.”

“A direct command from Thomas has to have a direct impact upon us, the portrayals of his personality. We must always follow his lead. What are you talking about with ‘resist’ and ‘spells’? Thomas’s internal conflicts do not follow the rules or Dungeons & Dragons,” Logan counters.

“Your _face_ doesn’t follow the rules of Dungeons & Dragons,” Roman retorts.

Patton clears his throat. “Thomas, it’s just about time to flip your eggs, buddy!”

As Thomas nods and does so, Roman grumbles and falls silent.

“All this talk is really dragon the mood down! Geez Louise. For what it’s worth, I don’t know what Deceit can do. We haven’t personally been testing out what happens if we go against what you ask us to do,” Patton assures with a goofy smile.

“Maybe that’s a question to ask Virgil, then,” Logan says.

“Logan!” Pat gasps.

“What? I’m simply asserting that Virgil has _experience_ ignoring Thomas’s will. Thomas cannot calm down on command if he is anxious. He cannot simply decide to relax himself and do so instantly. Prior to our breakthrough with him, Virgil would frequently directly disobey Thomas’s requests to calm down. Perhaps it’s a trait of Dark Sides to be less swayed by Thomas’s decisions.”

“Or a trait of all of us,” Roman says. “He can’t order _me_ to be more creative. And he can’t order you to stop thinking so much. All I’m saying is that _none_ of us follow Thomas’s lead one-hundred percent.”

“… Perhaps,” Logan concedes.

Thomas is glad he can pit them against one another to work out his own problems.

* * *

Late at night, when he can’t fall asleep because his body isn’t used to doing so until after midnight, he scrolls social media. When he’s lucky, Virgil will grace his presence by showing up (if only to mirror his exact behavior from a distance). Scanning their tumblr dashboard in silent company seems to be something Virgil enjoys enough to seek out. But tonight, Thomas has too many questions in his head.

“Out of curiosity, what defines a dark side?” Thomas questions quietly.

“Uh, it’s just a subset of sides. Just a category,” Virgil says. He sounds dismissive. Disinterested.

“But, like, what makes a side dark?”

“Being a trait that’s seen as a bad thing, dude.”

“So you’re a dark side.”

Virgil glares at Thomas, but huffs. (Maybe they’re getting somewhere by getting personal.) “Yeah. So what? I’m not on their team, really, so what does it matter?”

“I’m just wondering what Deceit is now. ‘Cause lying’s still definitely a bad thing to endorse, right? But he’s also been minding his own business ever since…” Thomas’s hand rubs gently at his shirt sleeve. “Since things went down, you know?”

“Sure.”

“So what would you call him?”

“I’m still calling him his name: Deceit. Does it _matter_ if he’s Light or Dark or whatever? He’s not plotting to overthrow the hierarchy of things anymore. Got that out of his system, I guess.”

Thomas frowns. “I know. He’s okay. I’m not having this conversation because I’m thinking of kicking him out or anything, I just— well, I guess I want to know where he stands in all of this. I saw how unstable their fusion was. Bandit? Like, _Alexandrite_ levels of dissonance. Clearly, Deceit wasn’t entirely cool with what was happening. But I just wonder how they could’ve fused at all if what they said wasn’t Deceit at all. Can that happen in fusion?”

“Well— no. All parties involved have to agree to say something on some level. Like, Doc would never start sprouting nonsense about adopting puppies just because Patton wanted to, because that’s not something Logan would agree to say.”

“So he agreed a little, but not enough to keep the fusion stable?”

“That’s getting complicated. It’s not something I care to discuss. Let him work his way up to being rehabilitated, for now. He just spent about a decade locked in the repression corner with a couple jerks who are basically a psychopaths. I think it’s _fair_ to give him a bit of time to adjust to it all.”

Thomas listens and hums. He can hear how sharp Virgil’s sentences are becoming. It’s all the tells that he’s working his anxious side up in all the wrong ways. “You’re right,” he says gently. “Thanks for talking to me about it.”

“No problem,” says Virgil, but it’s tight.

Thomas almost feels their friendship level chip a little from the exchange as if he’s in The Sims. Virgil will definitely be avoiding him for the next few days. He sighs and goes back to tumblr.

* * *

He’s drinking more, now.

Not to the extent that he has a problem or a dependency, but it’s becoming more often than not that he spends his afternoons lounging and drinking a couple glasses of wine. Wine’s always been his soft spot. Hard liquor and mixed drinks are all well and good at parties, but Thomas’s inner introverted self has never been able to turn down a good red wine when given the option. So he allots more of his budget for wine, and very occasionally allows himself to get wine-drunk.

(It feels better to have an excuse for losing time. To have something to blame it on. To be able to point and say “everyone forgets what they do when they’re smashed”, even if there’s not anyone around to say it to.)

Nobody’s happy about it, really. The friends that are around enough to notice (read: Joan and Camden and that’s the end of the list for right now) definitely notice. Thomas sees them look at the wine rack and the sink with glasses in it and he watches them turn to him and say absolutely _nothing_ on the matter. He thinks that Camden sees it, but chooses not to comment because he thinks he doesn’t know Thomas well enough to be unkind and rude like that. Conversely, he knows that Joan sees it, but also sees Thomas going through a rough patch that he’s insisted on multiple occasions that he needs to figure out alone, so they’re letting it slide until it either resolves itself or gets worse to the point where they need to step in. It’s a whole ‘nother ballpark internally, though. Inside his head, he’s hearing over and over how his wallet can’t afford this pace (thanks for the update, Logan) and he has to dream bigger than wine to solve his problems (very helpful, Roman) and be careful about how fast he’s going (maybe tomorrow, Patton) and ‘this is an unhealthy coping mechanism and you know it’ (he knows, Virge, he knows, so shut it). Even Thomas himself…

“Look,” he says to the empty air in his living room. “It’s not a problem. I’m perfectly capable of keeping myself out of terrible habits and vices. And even if it started to be a problem, I won’t have the money to spare to fuel it once I start seeing doctors and stuff.”

Nobody responds. There’s no voice in his head that speaks to him, nobody rising up or popping in. No hallucinations at all, actually.

Thomas sighs, pressing his lips together. He’s upset, but he’s been upset for a while. He shoots a glance towards the kitchen. “I have a lot of problems - or maybe just this one big one - but drinking isn’t going to be one of them. I promise.”

But he’s not talking to anyone. He’s alone in his house. If there’s anyone listening in his imagination, they’re not picking up the figurative phone to listen in to the current Thomas dilemma. Right now, he’s really and truly talking to himself. It feels weird to note that he’s still half-expecting a response. As if the sides are real people who really hear what he says and respond, as if they’re not figments of his imagination. As if they’re not glorified imaginary friends.

He’s growing a little worried that they’re not, though.

* * *

A month, Thomas finds, takes an eternity when you’re waiting for it to pass.

Any other time, he’d be filling his days with a good balance of friend hang-outs, video work, and lolly-gagging. It had never been a problem before to let time pass. In fact, he only ever got anxious about time when he had something good to look forward to, like holidays or tickets to shows or conventions. He almost always forcibly ignored bad deadlines or unfortunate appointments until his phone reminded him about it the day before it was to happen. But this time. This time it feels like it takes up the space of eons.

Okay, maybe he’s being dramatic.

“Truly, I can’t _believe_ time is passing so slow,” Roman sighs. “It’s draining the very _life_ from my _soul_ , waiting here so aware of the event day creeping closer with every sluggish tick of the lock. For truly, the culmination of minutes spent attempting to pass time under a faster perception must amass to _crazy_ wild lengths! It’s heart-wrenching. It’s vile. It’s booooooriiiiiiing…!”

Okay, maybe he has a reason.

“Roman, I don’t need a narration of how bored I am in Shakespearian format,” Thomas chides reluctantly. He doesn’t want to discourage Roman from finding some small piece of entertainment in this long wait, but the monologuing is getting on his nerves after _fifteen_ _minutes_ of it. “Besides, isn’t there stuff going on with the others? I feel pretty bad after all the stuff about Lee and Mary Lee’s wedding.”

“Maybe. Patton says I did my part, though. As long as you’re okay, I guess my presence in their discussions isn’t super necessary! I’m just the side that does your job for you.”

“Hey,” Thomas squawks. “I can do my own job!”

Roman chuckles and nods. “Yeah, yeah. I know you can, but why would you want to do it _alone_? The ideas I give you are so amazing. And when you tell the ideas to Joan and they like them too? Ugh, it’s like there’s _nothing_ in the world that could bring us down. Why would you want to go back to imagining alone?”

“I don’t,” Thomas says. “I really don’t. Sorry, I’m sure that sounded like I was saying I don’t need you.”

Roman purses his lips. “I really am glad I’m what you want in a creative partner. It means a lot to me that _I’m_ who you choose to make art with.”

He _would_ take that as a jealous stab at Thomas’s reliance on Joan for scriptwriting, but only a few seconds ago, Roman had just been praising Joan’s input and claiming that their contributions meant just as much to Roman as they did to Thomas himself. Thomas flicks through the TV channels for a moment before landing on Tangled and glancing over at Roman again. The prince grins happily at Thomas - a glance that tells Thomas his consideration meant the world in lifting the prince’s mood and did not go unnoticed - and watches the movie with fascination, as if he can prove how grateful he is for the distraction by giving it his total attention.

And while Roman watches the movie through Thomas’s eyes, Thomas can’t help but wonder who _else_ Roman would think he would create with.

* * *

And then he meets the Duke.

It turns out all you need to draw out a Dark Side who wants to be found is to take away the internal gatekeeper. With Deceit isolated from the dark sides, Thomas realizes a little too late that there was nobody intentionally keeping them away. And so, when Remus starts lurking around, there’s nothing stopping him until one day he shows up inbroad daylight and knocks Roman out.

 _(It doesn’t happen like he writes it in the future for the video. For one, he’s known Virgil was a Dark Side since practically the beginning, so there’s not really a need for a dramatic confession of it in the video. Even if the arguments and the lineup of revelations and the general final decision are the same, when it happens to him it’s a lot less kid friendly. There’s no Disney Villain Song to introduce him. The visions Duke conjures are just as vivid as Thomas had imagined them in theory. The language is crude. The infighting is a little gorey, and none of the others wait for their turns to speak. Conversations get derailed and sidetracked until they’re talking about it straight through the morning and through the afternoon and the sun has already set by the time they actually sort it out. In the future, in three weeks when he’s planning a new episode with Joan, he will pitch the idea to them and insist, to their confusion, upon Remus’s character and the story arc. Where he usually leaves room for Joan to suggest paths for the video to take narratively, Thomas will insist on things without saying why. Remus’s name. Remus’s title of ‘duke’. The theme of constant inner conflict. Joan will ask him what Remus’s official trait is, and Thomas won’t be able give a good answer because he won’t_ know _. It’ll be clear to both of them how out of place everything is thematically within the series. Joan will hesitantly go along with it without digging too deep into it, because Joan is, above all, loyal to a fault, and Thomas will feel his stomach churn in guilt, but refrain from explaining himself.)_

In all frankness, it’s a long and arduous conversation that exhausts Thomas more than he thinks it should. When Duke finally sinks out, Thomas sighs and rubs at his face. “Shit, guys. Really? Right now was not the ideal time for a new dark side to pop up and pester me with thoughts about how easy it would be for me to…”

There’s a tense pause. After a whole debate on why Thomas shouldn’t repress Duke’s suggestions and thoughts, he decides to let himself remember it for a moment.

But a moment’s all it needs to slam back.

 _Grabbing Joan and dragging them where he wants them (it wouldn’t be hard, they’re too lanky to stand a chance) and doing terrible things to them (too much don’t think about that don’t_ don’t _, God no, he’s never, not_ them _, not_ anyone _ever, never **that** , God) and strangling them until they stop struggling, passed out, and dragging them down the hall by the wrists and then propping up the body in the bathtub and then running a knife into their stomach (where there’s no bones where it’s easier to cut into than a watermellon where they’d bleed out and be un-revive-able in under fifteen minutes) only when the blood’s dripping off Thomas’s hands onto the bathroom floor does it hit him what he’s done and he’s sitting, curled up, shaking and sobbing over what he’s done, and at that point it doesn’t matter what happens _after _because the_ weight _of what he’s just done is—_

Thomas actually whimpers, grabbing at the bathrobe and pulling it tighter around his chest.

“He comes when you’re already low,” Virgil mutters. “It’s not really your fault that he can exploit your instability.”

“When did Remus get the chance to talk to Deceit?” asks Logan. “He mentioned Deceit’s influence on his appearance for a not-insignificant portion of the introductory speech he gave us. And as loathe as I am to admit it, the Duke doesn’t actually lie.”

“It was…” Virgil sighs. Then, he crosses his arms. “Last week, alright? I tried going downstairs to just negotiate. They’re having far too much influence on Thomas’s life at the moment so I was going to ask them both to shut up. Or— see if he’d let Deceit back. I didn’t realize the Duke wasn’t just hiding away in his room. Obviously, he took the chance to find Dee himself.”

“Let me get this right: you left Deceit alone?” Logan asks slowly, raising his eyebrows and tilting his head forward and Thomas is already bracing for this conversation to take a turn for the worst because that kind of tone never goes over well with anyone.

“Oh, I’m sorry, are we really holding him prisoner? Is that what you think I should be doing?” Virgil retorts. “Because you should probably tell him that.”

“You don’t need to be a warden to supervise him,” Logan says.

“So that’s my full time job now. Great. Good to know.”

“Don’t be preposterous, Virgil. I’m simply saying we all should keep an eye on him. The internal maelstrom is vicious enough as it is without Deceit instigating and perpetuating further conflict. Perhaps we have been assuming that you would take the mantle on that front, and for that I apologize. I’m more than willing to keep him company should you require time to decompress and re-center yourself.”

“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind,” Virgil deadpans, sneering.

“Let’s not _fight_ ,” Patton says, his voice raised. It shocks Thomas a little. He doesn’t often hear Patton speaking with a firm tone, but here he is, frowning at the two fighting sides with his hands square on his hips. “It’s not right to talk about Deceit like a prisoner when we all _agree_ he’s not! Now, it doesn’t much matter who talked to who if we all agree that Deceit is free to talk to _whoever_ he wants.”

“Patton, I thought you’d be last to condone the scheming of the Dark Sides,” Logan quips.

“Well, I think we just established that we have to be capable of letting them go. Hunting Duke down and fighting him isn’t going to solve Thomas’s problems. And neither is micromanaging Deceit. Not when right now, he’s playing such a _big_ _part_ in Thomas’s life.”

“We’ll have to see what medical professionals have to say about all this, then,” Logan nods. “Until then, I think it best if we all took time to be alone. Call us if you need us, Thomas.”

And they all go, after that. Not a word more. Just awkward glances trying to communicate assurances that their collective friendship is still intact before they go.

Thomas doesn’t hear more than muffled, distant conversations in his head for a few days.

It doesn’t feel any better.

* * *

He goes to his doctor and they run about a thousand tests.

In the back of his head, he can hear the sides arguing quietly. Patton’s complaining about how not fun it is to sit in a room waiting for blood test results. Roman’s criticizing the waste of a beautiful day. Logan’s attempting to explain why the results for these tests are absolutely necessary. Virgil’s complaining about how much money it’ll cost.

Deceit… Deceit’s _there_ , Thomas can tell. But he’s not piping in other than to agree that he’s ‘ _definitely_ not bored of all this waiting’.

All the tests come back negative. No head injuries. No brain _disease_.

They tell him to find a psychiatrist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One might say, “why don’t they just talk to each other?” Well first of all, through Idiot Plot, all things are possible so jot that down.
> 
> Fusions:  
> Roman + Remus = [Royal](https://ibb.co/YysDNWK)  
> Deceit + Virgil = [Thief (modern attire)](https://ibb.co/X7cXNxg)  
> 


	3. colors in a rainbow

As he shops around, Thomas can’t help but feel a little upset about it all.

“Talyn’s been messaging you,” Roman remarks, glancing over Thomas’s shoulder as he passes to look at the phone screen. “You should tell them you’re alright.”

“Am I, though?” Thomas asks. “Okay, sure, so I don’t have a tumor causing memory gaps, but that doesn’t mean I’m fine. It just means that whatever this is is internal. Mental.”

“I concur,” Logan agrees from across the table. The three of them occupy the kitchen as the morning trickles by. “We knew we needed to seek a professional. Now that we’ve ruled out medical professionals, we move on to psychiatric. Thomas, remind me again whom the third option on our list is? I’m making an internal list to reenforce your memory of your choices.”

“Michelle Jacobs,” Thomas answers, squinting at his laptop. “There’s so many to get through… You’re sure we have to call all of them?”

“As many as it takes to find one satisfactory. That is to say, one that sets you at ease. There are plenty of therapists and psychiatrists who do not diagnose patients correctly via denying the validity of their symptoms. The last thing we need is to wind up with someone who doesn’t believe you. It’s absolutely necessary to pick someone who will be open to listening to you in the first place. Calling with questions is a crucial step to finding the right fit without wasting your money.”

“Besides,” Roman says, “that’s what I’m here for. I’ll feed you lines, you just repeat them the same exact way I say it and bada-bing-bang-boom, we’ve finished one interview and we’re onto the next, lickety-split. And Logan will take notes for you, or whatever.”

“Indeed,” Logan concurs.

“Well, aren’t you two being productive. Where’s Virgil? He should get in on this,” Thomas snickers.

Logan shakes his head. “Unfortunately, Virgil is otherwise preoccupied.”

“He’s managing Mercy,” Roman grumbles, suddenly much less chipper.

“Mer— wait, who’s Mercy?” Thomas asks. It sounds vaguely familiar but he can’t quite recall. “Wait, Mercy as in Patton and Deceit? That should be a bad mix, right? Patton kinda hates everything Deceit stands for.”

“It’s not so dramatic, Thomas,” Logan interrupts. “He’s not so uncontrollably volatile as you might think. Mercy just… requires supervision when he exists.”

“Why?”

“He’s prone to irrationality.”

Thomas stuffs a spoon of cereal in his mouth and then points it at Roman. “So why’re you so upset about it? Is it ‘cause you hate Deceit? Or you miss Virge?”

“I can deal with Deceit. Honestly, he’s not awful when he’s not actively plotting to get us all confused and arguing! But Patton being gone? Well, it’s hard for me to keep the optimism in this family by myself,” Roman exclaims before Logan flicks his ear.

“Woe is you. Can we get back to work?”

“Well, I’m still eating,” Thomas says, gesturing to his bowl of cereal. He thinks he’s being pretty gracious in not pointing out how Roman totally dodged talking about Virgil at all. “No point calling professionals with food in my mouth. Tell me why Mercy needs a babysitter.”

Roman sighs and leans on the table as he stands. He looks annoyed and resigned, as if he’d been hoping that he could distract Thomas to avoid continuing this conversation too. “Mercy likes to be kind and to lie to protect others. He’s great when we need some compassion, but not so much when he cuts the power to the Mind palace as an excuse to throw out all the machines because he’d decided that all the electronics in the palace were ‘imprisoned’ and he clearly had to set them free by tossing them out the window.”

“Oh.”

“Not out of delusion, mind you. That’s another beast altogether. Out of the philosophy that nobody knows if inanimate objects have feelings, since they can’t express it one way or another via communication,” Roman sighs. “He’s a polite and covert rebel rouser, if you like.”

“A quaint way of putting it,” Logan agrees. “Now, we should aim for at least ten phone calls to psychiatric practitioners in the area this morning.”

* * *

He can’t believe he’s actually meeting someone, but as he sits down awkwardly on a couch with a glass coffee table between him and the chair the psyciatrist has seated herself in, he swallows his nerves and smiles. Smalltalk out of the way, he waits for her to cut to the chase.

“You’ve come here seeking answers to your symptoms. Could you tell me what symptoms concern you?”

“Definitely the memory loss,” Thomas says, locking his hands together. “I’ve been losing track of time and forgetting entire days. Everyone I ask says I’m being normal. But I end up in rooms I don’t remember going in, and experience days out of order, and I lost like a third of a week this month. So I guess I’m afraid I have amnesia or something.”

“When did you first notice this happening?” she asks, readying her pen.

Thomas bites his lip and thinks back to the big fight between Optimism and Discontentment. He wants to say the memory loss started there, but that would be wrong. When he stands there, talking to the sides, he’s losing time too. And when he went to the Mind Palace or to Virgil’s room, he couldn’t remember where he was either. It’s been happening for longer than he was willing to admit. Now, he has to. “A little more than a year ago. It only became worryingly regular about a month ago.”

The doctor hums. She reads over her notes and looks back up. “Your medical file says you’re diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder and acute depression.”

“Yeah. I don’t really know when or how, but I got a lot more troubled from mid teenage years to now.”

“No idea why?”

“No, mostly. I was bullied a little, but I think I got over that and it wasn’t a big deal. My mental state only became a real problem when I graduated college with my Chemical Engineering degree, because I realized what I loved more was entertainment. So I became a professional actor and an online video… person, and that took a lot of energy to keep up.”

“Of course,” she agreed, taking note of that. “Being a public figure is a lot of pressure. So how often would you say you feel depressed or anxious?”

“Often,” Thomas says before realizing that’s not a real answer. “I mean, daily at the very least. Anxiety is a fixed point in the routine, and depressed moods come and go every once in a while. Maybe ten days out of every month?”

“Your medical record also says you’ve not had any indication of epilepsy, intense drug use, or traumatic brain injury. This is correct?”

“Yes,” Thomas nods. “None of those things have ever happened to me.”

“What was your childhood like? Childhood as in formative elementary school and middle school years. We’ll leave teenage years out of this question,”

“It was good,” Thomas says. “I had a lot of fun as a kid, I remember smiling all the time. Always singing, making jokes. I have a thousand home videos.”

“All good memories?” the doctor asks.

“Yeah,” Thomas nods, furrowing his brows a touch.

“Do you remember any rough times?”

“No, I was a pretty happy kid,” Thomas says.

“Is that what others say when they talk about you when you were a kid?”

“I…” Thomas pauses, forcing himself to dig for an honest answer. “I don’t know. They liked me. They told me not to change. I guess my parents and some family friends always said I was kind of moody, but that’s not how I remember it.”

“Do you remember any significant emotional low points from childhood?”

“Not really,” Thomas shrugs. “That’s nostalgia though, right? Remembering all the good parts.”

The doctor hums and writes in her notebook. Intentional or not, it makes Thomas’s stomach drop in worry. “Alright. Thomas, you say there are periods of your life that you can’t remember? Could you pinpoint when?”

“Well, parts of my childhood, I guess. But that’s not unusual. A lot of the tween years are a big blur.”

“Could you tell me something that happened to you when you were… say twelve?”

“Twelve? No, uh, not really. I think… uh maybe I played Mario a bunch that year?”

“That’s not very specific.”

“It’s all I got. I couldn’t tell you what I was up to in my day-to-day life at that age, I guess.

“Back to the present, then. Have you ever found yourself a significant distance from places you normally go with no recollection of how you got there, where you were going, or why?”

“Who doesn’t? It’s like the Sims when your action gets cancelled,” Thomas chuckles. He stops abruptly when he sees the woman’s confused face. “Oh. Uh, never mind that last part. Yeah, sometimes. I’m a forgetful person though, it’s not unusual.”

“Noted,” she says, sounding relieved that she didn’t have to understand his reference in order to get an answer out of him. “Do you ever have out of body experiences when these memory gaps occur? As if you’re watching your body go about its business?”

“Maybe? Not like I’m outside, but like I’m not even making the conscious choice to do my routine. Kind of like I’m on autopilot.”

“Do you ever feel as though you are not alone in your head? As if there is another or even multiple others in your mind?”

Thomas swallows hard, but his throat is dry.

He feels like she’s read his mind, like she’s cut through all the small talk right to the intense part. He wonders if he should admit to it, if he should even think to tell another person that he likes arguing with himself to solve his problems. But if he does, he’ll have to admit that he dresses up like each of them when he’s in their mood, and that he knows the style and personality of each of them, and that they’re a regular part of his routine.

“I like to argue with myself sometimes to solve problems. Like, internal debates,” Thomas says.

“Is that a no?”

“Well, the different aspects of myself are separate from how I see it,” Thomas explains. “Like, the logical side of my arguments and the fanciful side.”

“And these are distinct personalities that separate themselves from one another?” the doctor asks, raising her eyebrows.

“Well yes, but they’re aspects of my personality,” Thomas says. “They’re different from each other, but they’re part of me. They’re prone to argue and have different opinions and even different likes and dislikes, but they’re always in line with who I am as a person.”

“Nonetheless, they’re distinct from you,” the doctor points out. “You keep referring to these thoughts as ‘them’— ‘them’ being separate from you.”

“Yeah, I suppose.”

“So you would agree that it feels as if multiple people occupy your head?”

“Yes,” Thomas says, ducking his head.

Baby steps.

* * *

On his fourth meeting with her, he has a headache. But he’s already got the thing scheduled, and he’s not so financially stable that he could justify cancelling it last-minute, so he goes anyway.

The entire time he sits on her couch, he feels like the world’s going fuzzy. He answers her to the best of his ability, but every time he blinks, he feels like he has to blink four more times to clear his vision. And then…

And then… well, uh…

In the moment, he’s not thinking about anything…

… because he’s not thinking enough to _realize_ he’s not thinking.

As if for the moment, he doesn’t exist on a physical level.

It feels like he’s spacing out hardcore.

It’s like he’s not anywhere.

Except…

Wait— except he was _supposed_ to be—

Well, and then it feels like he’s waking up, slamming back into awareness with a slight panic. But he’s already tense and sitting up, and his headache is still there but now it’s fading, and he knows in a moment - the moment he looks at the clock on the wall and it’s thirty minutes later than he remembers - that he wasn’t asleep at all.

Thomas tries his best not to look panicked as he looks his psychiatrist in the eye and shrugs with an agreeable nod, hoping to look nonchalant.

“Hello?” the kind lady prompts.

“Yep? What’s up, doc?” Thomas smiles. He brushes the hair out of his eyes and gives his best innocent look.

“You were just answering my question.”

“Oh,” Thomas says, feeling his chest deflate a little. “Sorry, what was the question again?”

She writes something down, and Thomas just knows in his gut that that’s bad bad _bad_ —

“I just kinda spaced out and forgot what I was saying,” he assures quickly.

“That’s okay, I promise. You were just telling me how you’re considering volunteering to walk dogs at the animal shelter. I asked if you had any dogs of your own.”

“I…” Thomas can’t say any more because he wasn’t. He definitely wasn’t considering walking dogs for fun. It’s not a bad idea, but the thought has never crossed his mind. He takes another minute to collect his thoughts, knowing every moment is more and more suspicious. Nonetheless, he just can’t think any faster at the moment. He feels groggy. He finally shakes his head. “No, not since I was a kid. I don’t really have the space for a dog of my own. I love to foster when I can, though.”

“So you said.”

Thomas swallows and nods.

“Unless that wasn’t you talking to me.”

He’s sweating, now, and he knows it, and he glances to the far wall and does not look at her as he provides an explanation. “Who else would you be talking to? I’m the only one in the room. I told you, I just lost my train of thought.”

She writes something else down. He’s not looking but he hears the scratch of graphite on paper. She’s taking notes, and she knows, she knows, she knows.

Thomas swallows hard and waits for her next question.

* * *

He has to go back twelve more times over the next two months.

It’s a very long process, during which he keeps up what video work he can and assures Talyn that he’s _not_ skimping out, he’s just waiting for a diagnosis. They back down, kindly. Luckily, Thomas doesn’t see them all that often except when he visits Joan. Otherwise, they only meet when planning and filming scripted videos.

In the meantime, he attends the meetings constantly.

They keep talking about it. About the sides, about his behavior, about his symptoms. It’s hard to attend that many meetings without revealing the extent to which the sides are involved in his thought process. After all, you can only skirt around a problem so much when it’s the reason you keep coming. He’s terrified of talking about it, because as much as he wants to know for sure and hear it from someone else and be told he’s not insane or suffering from some rare form of dementia, he can’t being himself to tell her what he thinks it might be. Thomas wants, in equal parts, to convince the psychiatrist to explain what’s happening to him _but also_ to not skew the results by insisting he has something he doesn’t. Mostly because despite his restlessness and worry, his conscience knows all to well that faking a mental illness is an objectively awful thing to do. If he pretended he was something he wasn’t just to get a free pass for his behavior, he’d never forgive himself, even if that wasn’t his intent in the first place. Besides, a small, tiny part of him is saying ‘I hear voices, and people get sent to mental hospitals for that,’ no matter how much he believes that mental illness does not define a person.

So he shares his experiences elusively, only ever telling the most mild stories that he knows for sure he isn’t making up. (Things like: he’s losing track of time, he thinks in internal arguments, he talks to himself a lot.) He’s careful— so careful to make sure he’s not exaggerating the truth or making up symptoms. The doctor, though careful not to jump to conclusions, says that the broad answer she’s come to is fairly undeniable anyway. At the end of it, he walks out with a vague, unspecified, and absolutely unofficial diagnosis. Treatments, he’s told, are both limited and almost entirely ineffective. His options are basically talk therapy or medications for depression and anxiety.

Then again, there’s no medication that treats dissociative disorders.

* * *

“There’s evidence for both, I guess,” Virgil growls.

“Logan, you got any way to give an answer as to which it is?” Roman asks.

“Frankly speaking, I don’t think I’m qualified. Nor are you. A professional just told us it could be either, and it could take an indefinite amount of time and evaluation to put a label to it,” Logan says.

“So basically, you’ve got nothing.”

“How dare—!”

“Shut up, guys!” Thomas growls.

The car falls silent.

Thomas exhales sharply and glares up at the windshield. “Does it matter which it is? No matter which exact disorder it is, we have it and it’s real. I’m— we’re a system. That’s the problem.”

“We’re a problem?” Patton asks in a tiny voice.

Thomas’s eyes widen. “No— no, Patton, I didn’t mean it like that. You’re not a problem—“

“Aren’t we, though?” Roman growls. “We’re causing memory gaps. We’re putting Thomas in strange situations. We’re causing this funk he’s in!”

“Hey, Princey, chill out,” Virgil barks. “We’re necessary.”

“Oh, and how do you know?”

“Because we wouldn’t exist if Thomas didn’t need us to!” Virgil yells.

You could hear a pin drop.

“I—“ Virgil presses out a breath through his nose, “I know this is freaky, but we need to stop this freaking out. We have to work together. For Thomas’s sake. Now, who cares if it’s OSDD or DID? Point is, we’re real and we can switch with Thomas and be in his body, and we need to take a break and process that that’s a fact before we have a system-wide meltdown, alright?”

Thomas sighs. “Alright. I’m gonna drive home. How about, everyone goes back to their rooms for a few hours to get everything out? We’ll figure this out, guys, but let’s get home first.”

Each of them agrees and mutters their farewells before leaving, one by one.

“Virgil,” Thomas calls before the last one goes.

The presence stays put.

“Did you know about this?”

Virgil leaves, and Thomas is alone.


	4. roman numeral

To say he’s having a bit of a crisis might be an understatement.

Thomas calmly cancels his plans with friends for the next few days to clear space for self-examination. None of said friends worry too much, because Thomas is the one calling them, and he isn’t the one who’s freaking out. (Not yet.) But he imagines that if he had to pretend everything was fine and dandy for an extended period, he’d fail to not be suspicious. Hence becoming a temporary hermit; it’s an absolute necessity at the moment. And that’s because Roman and Patton and Logan are all chattering ceaselessly over this new information. Thomas hears almost all of it, as if it’s an argument in the next room that he has no choice but to overhear. At times, he can tune it out by blasting the volume on his TV or focusing hard on cooking free Hello Fresh food or paying attention to a phone call, but shutting them out entirely is nigh impossible.

_“Now, Logan, don’t beat yourself up. Clearly, it’s not something you could have known ahead of time!”_

_“I can’t believe I neglected my duties that I’m perfectly well-suited towards. This is something I’d expect from Roman, not myself. No offense, of course.”_

_“Offense taken! Apparently I’ve been doing my job! Clearly, a prince such as myself is intended to protect the host, right? Well, Thomas is very obviously out of harm’s way. My job’s done so well I’m in retirement, so don’t say it sounds like me just because you can’t handle the fact that_ you _suck at scheduling.”_

_“I wasn’t_ aware _until very recently that I was in charge of scheduling the pilot of Thomas’s body. How could I possibly conduct a job I’m unaware of?”_

_“Uh, I dunno, how about by paying attention when we went_ missing _?”_

_“Oh,_ hush _! Both of you.”_

_“Honestly, I have no clue as to what your job is, Patton. Are you a distraction from trauma? Something akin to the function of a therapy dog? Or perhaps are you a keeper of happy emotions as a supply for depressed times. While you store memories, it’s clear that it’s more Deceit’s job to repress traumatic ones.”_

_“Do I have to have a job to be here?”_

_“Yes. Or else you would not exist in the first place. We exist because Thomas needs us to.”_

_“Or maybe because we’re real, Lo. Why don’t you chill with the accusations and insults? We all know you’re just lashing out because you’re pissed you failed your one job.”_

_“My one job? What if I was created to take on Thomas’s school workload? Or perhaps to supply a line of reasoning to sensibly work through episodes of extreme distress? Just because it’s clear none of you should be in charge of gatekeeping does not mean it is the only occupation that falls on my shoulders.”_

_“Cut it out. We didn’t know we had jobs until this week.”_

_“Hey, if we’re not real and we have magic anyway, do you think we can, like, firebend? Quickly, Patton! Try airbending!”_

The sound of someone blowing harshly through their lips, like a pitiful attempt at whistling.

_“Well. I’m thoroughly disappointed.”_

It goes on like this for hours. Thomas lies in bed, scrolling through his feeds and responding to fanders. Preparing his fanart compilation for this week. Picking out a couple of commentators to use as featured fanders on the next few videos. He does as much mindless work as he can, because he can’t focus enough to write when everyone’s yelling. (Not everyone, he notices. Virgil and Deceit are silent. Maybe alone deeper in his head, debating in private. Where he can’t hear them. Just like Remus and the other side he doesn’t even know the name of. Thomas doesn’t want to think about that, or even think about them and Virgil in the same sentence. Not even when he knows there’s a connection there.)

He does his best to carry on.

* * *

“Who am I?” he asks.

He looks down at his hands, which are familiar enough. He’s in a body that feels about right, but he can’t figure out why his head isn’t on straight. Then, he thinks about what he’s just said out loud and snickers. Hah. Straight.

“Who am I?” he continues to the tune of Les Miz. “Another day, another destiny.”

He likes musicals. Duh. He’s tall. He’s fairly muscular. He can sing like it’s nobody’s business. He knows all these things to be true, but—

He feels out of place, he shouldn’t be here—

This is weird, why does it feel like—

“What’s— is this real? Am I dreaming?” he asks. “Why does my voice sound w…”

He squints. His cadence is off-kilter. Like he’s picked up a slight accent. Why?

He stands up abruptly. Walks to the bathroom. Looks in the mirror. Squints into his own eyes and tries to figure out what’s wrong. He looks and sees himself. The sudden sensation that his body isn’t his, that it can’t be, that maybe it never has been, that the universe is shifted out of place because whatever is happening here right now, it’s not the way it’s supposed to be. It’s almost correct but the longer he looks, it’s wrong _wrong wrong—_

“Kiddo, have you— oh.”

He nearly jumps out of his skin as Patton appears in the doorway of the bathroom. (Kind-of appears in the hallucination way, at least.) Then, he sighs in relief. “Patton. You scared me.”

Patton’s eyes turn worried. “Uh, kiddo, do you know who you are?”

His eyes widen before his shoulders sag in relief. “Oh thank God. No, I don’t. Do you know what’s happening?”

“I think we should call the others up,” Patton decides. The side beacons for him to move to another room, and he’s honor bound to follow. When they arrive in the living room, Patton clears his throat. “Logan? Virgil? Could you c’mere for a second?”

“What’s wrong?” Logan asks, rising up.

“Does something always have to be wrong?” he-who-doesn’t-know-his-own-identity retorts.

“With us? Of c— oh my. Patton, this is quite a predicament,” Logan says, gobsmacked. “I wasn’t aware this was possible.”

“Well it’s not like they predica- **meant** to. I’m sure it was just an accident,” Patton huffed, putting his hands on his hips. Then, he sheepishly looked over to the Mystery Man with an assuring and supportive tone, saying, “Not that it’s a bad thing, I promise! Just a little confusing.”

“Everything’s confusing to you,” Logan says.

“Actually—! … Well, uh, that’s not not true,” Patton admits. “Maybe not hugs? Hugs aren’t confusing!”

“Fantastic. I’m glad we’ve found the exception. Onto more pressing topics: why hasn’t Virgil arrived?”

And, as though the repeated mention is a beacon, Virgil pops up looking fairly harried.

“I’m here—“ Virgil cuts himself off too. He pauses in the middle of smoothing out his hoodie when he looks up and sees the scene before him. “Holy smokes.”

Patton nods. “I didn’t know we could fuse with him.”

Virgil peers at him. “No, no it’s not just fusion. It’s co-consciousness. Roman’s co-fronting with Thomas.”

“What’s the difference?” Patton asks.

“Wait, I’m Thomas and Roman? At the same time? That… sounds like a fusion,” The Body says, very confused. Thomas-Roman thinks back to the mirror, noticing finally why it looked weird. It’s because the Thomas part of his brain was seeing himself and saying ‘ _yes, correct, normal_ ’, but the Roman part saw Thomas’s body and saying ‘ _no no wrong wrong **wrong**_ ’ and neither part of him understood which was right until he realized _both_ were.

“I see Virgil’s point,” Logan interjects. “Allow me to explain. While mentally, this may be akin to fusion, our fusion is typically defined by a new appearance, combined attributes, and a shared, nearly telepathic control of the body.”

“So… this?”

Logan purses his lips. “… I… don’t have a counter-argument.”

“Maybe our fusion’s always been co-conch-ness and we didn’t know it!” Patton suggests.

“Co-consciousness,” Logan corrects.

“Gesundheit.”

“They make some good points,” Logan mutters aside to Virgil. “Well, this development is groundbreaking progression for our understanding of Thomas’s mind. What is fusion, except an internal period of co-consciousness? This explains quite a lot about why our ability to do so is possible, considering that multiple online sources have declared rather unanimously that within a system, fusions should be considered integration and our temporary fusion should not be possible as a normal and routinely impermanent occurrence. How exciting. My interest is thoroughly piqued.”

“But there _is_ a difference. The difference is they’re fronting. In the real world,” Virgil grumbles stubbornly. “We’re not in the Mind Palace.”

“That just means I don’t have superpowers,” the Roman-Thomas says. “Which is underwhelming. Do you think we’d have some if we fused when someone else is fronting?”

“You should try,” Patton gasps. “What’s your name?”

“Hm. Thoman? Nono— wait, I’ve got it: Romas! Pronounced _Rho_ -mus, because Rah- _mass_ just doesn’t sound as neat,” he decides. Romas smirks at his hands and then back up at the other three.

“That’s. So. _Perfect_ ,” Patton emphasizes.

“Well, whatever’s going on, uh, Romas - right?” Virgil tries. “Be careful. Nobody knows what to expect here.”

“Well, not so much co-fronting, but the fact that it’s not simply co-operative control of the body, but mind-melding is certainly so,” Logan agrees. He glances at Virgil and nods. “On this matter, I concur. Tread lightly, Romas.”

“Got it!”

They proceed to have an extremely productive day of writing and workshopping sketch ideas between episodes of Queer Eye.

* * *

“Well why can’t we talk this whole thing out ourselves?” Roman asks, planting his hands on the back of Thomas’s couch as he leans over it. “We have more time together than with a therapist.”

“We’re hardly qualified to draw medical conclusions,” Logan says.

“Well maybe it doesn’t matter how it’s classified! Maybe just knowing how it works is progress enough,” Patton says with a tentative smile. He gently taps the small notebook on the coffee table. “Thomas, I think we should just keep on journaling.”

“If we’re recording what happens anyway, why not experiment? See what we can and can’t do?” Roman says.

“Now son, don’t want to push Thomas’s borders,” Patton frowns. “Not if he doesn’t okay it first.”

“Point of order, I’d like to mention I think Patton’s wrong. Defining Thomas’s condition is paramount to understanding how to research and address it in the future,” Logan says.

“Exactly! Patton, I know your whole feelings-y thing is kind of your gig, but _come on_. Who, between us, has shared consciousness with him?” asks Roman with a show-off-y and frankly kind of pompous tone. “I’m pretty sure _I know_ how he wants to proceed.”

Thomas kind of, a little bit, wants to speak for himself on the matter, but none of them stop talking long enough for him to get a word in edgewise.

Logan glares at him. “I was on your side, Roman, what with experimentation being a significant way to reach answers. Now I’m heavily considering Patton’s proposal of slower and safer data recording.”

“Well it can’t all be—“

Roman cuts off when by the stairs, Virgil appears.

His face sets in a scowl. Roman huffs, “So nice of you to join us.”

“I was…” Virgil trails off staring at Thomas, but quickly glances between all of them. “What’s going on? Thomas, you don’t look too hot.”

Logan takes a deep breath. “We were just discussing the necessity of finding the exact nature of Thomas’s dissociative disorder.”

“You mean, figuring out which type it is?” Virgil asks.

“Yes,” Thomas speaks up. “I understand all your points. Really. But— I’m not sure I really want to spend forever on this.”

“Yeah. I know what you mean. On one hand you want to know what it is. What’s wrong with you. Or—“ Virgil stalls, glancing at Roman nervously before adding air quotes. “What’s ‘wrong’ supposedly. But alternatively, you kinda _don’t_ want it to be Dissociative Identity Disorder, because then you and Joan have been misleading people. It means you’ve been misleading them all along.”

Thomas laughs weakly. “Even when Deceit isn’t physically here…”

Aside, he hears Logan muttering something about them never being _physically_ anything.

Thomas sighs, “You’re right. In a way, I don’t want it to be that, because then the premise of my Sanders Sides videos is inherently… wrong. It wouldn’t be about completely internal discussion—“

“Now it’s about your identity disorder,” Virgil finishes. “And therefore, in some way, not relatable or applicable to many of your viewers. It _stops_ being a shared experience and _starts_ being the Thomas Once Had A Traumatic Experience Show. I know.”

“A prime example of an argument against Dissociative Identity Disorder. We are still tied distinctly and irreversibly to parts of Thomas’s mind,” Logan says. “Were we to be fully developed people, I sincerely doubt we would respond so reliably to Thomas’s emotions. Which, of course, Thomas himself has acknowledged before when speaking of us as characters with Joan for script writing.”

“But then he’s always been _lying_ ,” Roman mutters. “The ideas for the mental turmoils and characterizations of ourselves in videos has always come from real experience! We’ve been lying to Joan all this time anyway.”

“But,” Virgil stresses, holding a hand up to halt the conversation. “He definitely doesn’t want to hear it’s anything but DID.”

“Say what now?” Roman asks. “Alright, I’m flippin’ confused. Didn’t we just freakin’ _agree_ that we don’t want DID?”

“Rhyming, really?”

“Get to your point!”

“At least people know what DID is!” Virgil shouts.

Thomas shrinks in the silence.

“What do you mean, kiddo?” Patton asks quietly.

“I mean…” Virgil tapers off, hesitating. Then he clears his throat and continues. “If it’s not DID, then it’s some offshoot of it. At least with DID, people have some prior knowledge. Even if it’s from horror movies and books, all he’ll have to explain is he’s not a murderer. But say ‘OSDD’…”

“You have to explain everything from the ground up,” Roman finishes quietly.

”Catch twenty-two,” Thomas mumbles.

None of them have a good answer.

* * *

It was another whole week before Logan showed up with a pen and a notepad and demanded they get to work. He told Thomas to grab his whiteboard, some markers, and his laptop and then they were off.

“Three columns, please. And for the sake of Aristotle, please use a ruler and make them straight,” Logan says.

“Me, straight? Never,” Thomas mumbles as he grabs the nearest straight-edged object (his laptop, coincidentally), places it over the whiteboard, and uses it to trace some even, neat lines to create columns. “I assume this is for—“

“Determining which dissociative disorder most closely fits your given situation, yes,” Logan says. “I’ve grown very tired of the vague and ambiguous label that you’ve been tentatively given, and I find that having a name to label it as is likely to both reassure you of your condition’s legitimacy and satisfy my need for clarification.”

“And it won’t make Virgil feel worse? I worried that having a label like that would be like a nail in the coffin for the Thomas Isn’t Normal Or Sane debate.”

“Virgil has bigger figurative fish to fry. And besides, it’s not like our conclusion today will be official. For that you would have to present our findings to your psychiatrist and request screening.”

“Right,” Thomas shrugs. “What’s first?”

After that, it’s surprisingly easy to look into it. There’s a fair amount (not a ton, but enough to count) of information on DID, OSDD and DDNOS (which is an outdated term with too much information to ignore completely) out there on various mental health websites and blogs. The catch is that a lot of it conflicts. Logan asks Thomas to write notes in a notebook and separate them by which website they got it from. Then, they cross reference what is largely agreed upon and write that information down on the whiteboard, leaving the confusing contradictory data behind. They actually have to split both the OSDD category and the DDNOS category into subsections 1a and 1b for variations. It’s Thomas’s suggestion that he adds a dotted line between these subsections within their larger category. And then, just to be safe, he writes the 1a subcategories in red Expo and the 1b in blue. Then, they’re off to debate it all together, one by one.

“Okay, I experience memory gaps. During those, presumably you guys are in control of my body, or I’d have people telling me that I’ve been wandering around blankly staring at walls,” Thomas says. “Somebody’s always at the wheel when I’m not.”

“Right, but you’ve been alone so much these days. And almost always around the house. You must understand: for us it’s almost impossible to tell the difference between walking around the Mind Palace and carrying out our daily habits and walking around your apartment doing the same thing. Some of the only differences are our magical abilities, which are exclusive to the Mind Palace, and other human beings, which are exclusive to real life. It’s not like we often use magic to check where we are.”

“So you don’t know?” Thomas asks.

“I’m not certain, no. However, I am certain that we have taken the reigns in the past. For example, take your get-together with Valerie last month. I believe Patton stepped in when you spaced out.”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess.”

Logan nods. “So it’s possible for us to take over, but it’s inconclusive how often we do.”

“I think it probably has to be most of the time during my memory gaps,” Thomas mumbles, placing a check-mark by the phrase in all the columns it appears in (DID, type 1a DDNOS, and OSDD-1a).

They continue debating the technicalities of everything and how they should broadly categorize such ranging questions. Such topics include the argument of if the sides are truly all internal variations of Thomas himself, or if their specializations in skill sets, knowledge, and personality are indicative of a state of being more distinct than previously assumed. Their solution for that is to split it into three subsets for ‘very similar’, ‘medium deviation’, and ‘very distinct’ with the preface that Thomas’s sides could easily be described by the first two, but not the third. They agreed upon that after noting that some blogs mention alters who are literally nonhuman. Or historical figures. Or just, like, animals. After they’ve gone through the entire whiteboard with check marks and x’s, Thomas makes a spreadsheet and punches in the descriptors into rows and the disorder names into columns, and then he highlights the rows which they’d decided were applicable until it‘s simple and fairly obvious what the tally is.

The official answer they arrive at is OSDD-1a with all seven highlighted rows being checked off. Tied for second place is both DID and Type 1a DDNOS with six out of seven.

“Then again, this is an approximation,” Thomas mutters once they’re done. “And nearly a tie. All of this is our guess.”

“Yes, but some we eliminated by deciding that their definitions were notably different from our situation. While I don’t feel comfortable making a call about a diagnosis without medical counsel, I believe that the options we’ve eliminated tonight are fairly certain.”

Thomas nods. Then, hesitantly, he looks up at Logan. “Cool. And you think that now we’ve narrowed it down, we’ll start feeling better?”

Logan frowns uncomfortably in return before clearing his throat. “Between us sides, perhaps. But for you, there are various interpersonal social stresses that this breakthrough will almost certainly not improve.”

“What stresses?”

“Your cell phone notifications are becoming incessant. I thought I’d warn you that with every text from Joan that you don’t even open, the chance of them calling you increases. As does the smaller, but non-zero percent chance of them dropping by unexpectedly and uninvited.”

“Whatever. Look, I just… don’t really want to talk to them right now.”

“Falsehood?” Logan says, confused. “Of course you wish to speak with them. You always wish to speak with them. Honestly, your relationship is just a handful checkpoints away from codependent.”

“Okay— yeah. I want to. But I don’t want to own up to not feeling well, because if I tell them about,” Thomas gestures vaguely at his head, “just like how I’ve been feeling, even, then they’ll, like, totally freak out.“

“Do you believe this formal recognition of your mental state being announced would have any lasting detrimental effect on your relationship?”

“No,” Thomas grumbles.

“Are you under the impression that they would in any way be unwelcoming in response?”

“No! It’s just— it’d be different. Not worse, not… not for long any way. But they would definitely freak out internally and then do a ton of research online and then start acting differently trying to help me. And I— we’re already figuring it out. I’m getting help. I don’t need their help.”

“No,” Logan agrees. “In a practical sense, the only actual thing they could possibly do would be to catch you during a moment of extreme duress during which a dark side is fronting and possibly harming you. But even then, Joan being present would be a complete danger, for whoever would be fronting could possibly become a physical threat to them as well.”

“Exactly. So you see, until I - we - have this totally under wraps I _really_ don’t think it’s a good idea to have Joan hovering around worrying about it.”

“I see. I hadn’t considered the illogical lengths your friend would go to in order to attempt to assist you in a practical sense. Just as you haven’t considered the benefits of their assistance in a psychological sense.”

“Wait, what?”

“Did you forget everything I told you about talking to people? You never listen. The short of it is that studies show that when you talk about your state of being with others, you’re likely to feel mentally and even physically better. You could choose to think of it as letting someone else share the figurative load. A weight off your shoulder, so they say.”

“But even if it’s a weight off my shoulders, that ends up a boulder on _Joan_. I just know they’d rethink everything about our relationship if they—“ Thomas pauses to breathe and regroup. “Not rethink everything. Just reconsider how they interact with me. They’d worry so much that they’re doing something wrong or— or whatever. Sure, I might feel better, but I’d just be putting the responsibility on them for expecting them to deal with everything that comes with me having a dissociative disorder, and I’d be expecting them to put up with it just because they’re my best friend.”

“But their decisions are their own,” Logan frowns. “Surely you can’t believe that your mere existence and state of being is a responsibility that Joan has to bear.”

“No, but the practical repercussions of it are things they’ll have to acknowledge. And so will everyone who I tell about this. It’s going to be hell to look at everyone and say ‘ _sometimes I black out and a whole 'nother person takes over_ ’ and hope that they still like me. It’ll be like coming out all over again except there’s no horror movies about _gay people_ going crazy and killing all their friends,” Thomas says, running a hand through his hair. “It’s not just a fun tidbit. It’s something everyone I know might have to deal with. I don’t think there’s any clear and logical answer to how to address all of that, Logan.”

There’s a long, long moment where Logan looks at him and sighs. “No, I don’t think there’s any one answer to that. But know this: your switching is a typically infrequent and - so far - not terribly endangering occurrence. As long as you explain your situation clearly, I cannot foresee any of your closest friends or family members turning you away.”

“Okay,” Thomas nods. He squeezes his eyes shut and leans back into his couch. “But I’m just not ready to tell Joan about it right now.”

“In the interest of your shared emotional health, you should avoid the unnecessary argument over their ‘apparent’ trustworthiness that will inevitably happen if you postpone telling them too long.”

“I won’t. Just… when I’m ready.”

“Very well.”

When he’s ready. (He doesn’t know when that will be.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am SORRY this took so long, school is a bitch and I recently moved so it’s been wyld.


	5. days of the week

Thomas is halfway through making a sandwich before he realizes something is off.  
  
He stops, focusing on his hands and then on the grilled cheese he’s making on the stove. Nothing wrong. He glances at the stove, wondering if he left the oven’s gas on and it’s just messing with his head. But even then, nothing is wrong with any of it. Warily, he continues his sandwich making and eats it at the coffee table before it hits him.   
  
His eyes snap to the window. It’s open, like it usually is when he isn’t filming anything (god knows windows can and will mess up continuity if given the chance), but there’s simply nothing outside. The sandwich drops from his hand and onto the floor, but he has bigger concerns. Thomas stands up and walks to the large sliding door where he should be able to see his modest porch. Instead, the porch itself is still there, but everything past it is a bright void. Peering closer, he can see that where ground level should be, there’s a thin gray grid stretching to oblivion.   
  
“What…” he mumbles. Thomas presses a hand up to the glass. He wonders what would happen if he stepped out of the door.   
  
Then, he hears footsteps approaching.   
  
“—t come from somewhere. Do you think it’s another of our general powers? That we can read his mind for the aspects we control?” Roman’s voice echoes from upstairs.   
  
“Mm. How should _I_ know? I’m just a simple alter,” Deceit’s coy voice answers. They’re getting closer. So much so that Thomas can hear their footsteps as they descend the stairs. He still can’t stop staring. His backyard’s supposed to be there. The world’s supposed to be there. How can it just be gone?   
  
“So you do know! How much about this do— Thomas?!”   
  
Thomas pries his gaze from the blank window to Roman and Deceit, standing still on the stairs, mid-step.   
  
“What are you _doing_ here?” Roman exclaims. He rushes forward until he is inches from Thomas and then reaches out. His hand raises and gently pushes at Thomas’s shoulder. Thomas sways a little from it, but that only makes Roman gasp. “I can touch him! He’s really here! He’s in the Mind Palace.”   
  
“ _Brilliant_ deduction,” Deceit says as he saunters up to take a look at Thomas too.   
  
That’s when Thomas notices. “Woah,” he exclaims. You guys look… different.”   
  
Roman’s hair is shorter. And more reddish. And in a cowlick. And Deceit’s hair is shaved close on the sides. Thomas hadn’t noticed before when he was further away and obscured by Roman (who, by the way, is also a solid four inches taller than Thomas is), but Deceit’s hair is _definitely_ a lighter brown-blonde color than his. And his face is much… how to put it? Much less creepy. The pink bags under his eyes Thomas had always seen now look more like an eternal black eye. The scales look less like a creepy face-paint and more like an actual set of scales growing on the left side of his face. Speaking of faces, Roman’s jaw is more… square than usual. And he’s taller. And he’s even buffer than Thomas is. Their clothes are different too. No fancy prince getup or villain garb, instead Roman’s wearing a letterman jacket and Deceit has a turtleneck on.   
  
“What happened to you guys?”   
  
“Nothing. We look like we usually do when we’re here. But you’re in the Mind Palace with us— I suppose that often when you’re here, it’s for pressing matters wherein our appearances are not the most notable detail of the room,” Roman says. “Deceit, what do you think?”   
  
“I don’t know. It’s not like this has _never happened before_ , or anything,” Deceit mumbles. “I definitely _don’t_ think you’re on to something, though.”   
  
“Well it must be that then. We look different to Thomas because he doesn’t see us within the Mind Palace often. But that raises the question: if Thomas isn’t fronting, then who is?”   
  
“I’m sure that it’s the absolute _worst_ possible scenario. Let’s set off the doomsday alarm now, just to be sure. It seems necessary,” Deceit says, his head tilting to one side as he raises his eyebrows tauntingly.   
  
“I’m not saying we need to force a switch just to possibly flush them out, if it even _is_ one of them. I’m just wondering what the body’s doing,” Roman shrugs. He turns then to Thomas. “This seems to be quite a mystery. Did anything happen, right before you found yourself here?”   
  
“I don’t know when I even got here, Roman,” Thomas says, happy to finally be addressed. “I only realized I wasn’t in the real world when you guys walked down the stairs. You know… in the real world you’re not actually there. I’m just imagining what you’d be doing. It’s much more make-believe than this.”   
  
“Of course I know. I have fronted before,” Roman says. “Most of the time when someone switches out with you, we figured you just spaced out, since we never see you and you never remember. You don’t even truly show up here, you just mentally project inwards somewhere.”   
  
“It couldn’t be that he’s present here because he’s more aware now,” Deceit guesses. He then shrugs. “You _totally_ weren’t about to check what the body’s doing, by the way.”   
  
“Right, sorry,” Roman mumbles. “Let’s go then.”   
  
“Okay?” Thomas asks, but Roman’s already moving to the couch. Deceit follows suit, so Thomas slowly does the same, sitting beside Roman. Roman fiddles with the remote to the television for a moment before he clicks it on, starting the device with a small static noise.   
  
The TV comes into focus slowly from the black-and-white static that it begins with. What appears onscreen looks like a go-pro video, where every head movement and adjustment moves the camera’s angle around its’ first-person perspective. Whoever-it-is browses through some webpage too distant to make out clearly on Thomas’s laptop whilst surrounded in what appears to be Thomas’s comforter bundled up on his couch, as if someone aborted a half-hearted attempt to make a pillow fort.   
  
“What’s Virgil doing out?” Roman wonders.   
  
“What was Thomas doing today, I wonder,” Deceit shrugs.   
  
“Say, Thomas, when’s the last time you’re sure you were in the real world?” Roman asks.   
  
“I was— was just going through tumblr,” says Thomas.   
  
“And? What happened?”   
  
“I don’t remember. I mean, nothing big? I just— there was some pretty heavy discourse on my dash that was kind of upsetting, so I left to make lunch.”   
  
Roman’s face falls a little in realization. He glances at Deceit. “Oh. Ace discourse?”   
  
“Yeah,” Thomas says sullenly.   
  
“Well that would have negative memories tied to it, what with how badly we got slammed for speaking out about it,” Roman admits. “Maybe it was an inadvertent trigger, and Virgil stepped in to distance you from thinking about it?”   
  
Thomas remembers that quite vividly. “How are you sure that Virgil’s the one piloting the body?”   
  
“Whatever you do, _please_ keep calling it ‘piloting’. It’s such a _natural_ and _catchy_ phrase,” Deceit growls.   
  
“Cheer up, grumpy. As for you, Thomas, yes! Behavior is a dead giveaway. Who else hunched like that? Nobody! Now we know it’s only Virgil fronting. At the very least, it’s not the worst result,” Roman says.   
  
“You mean another dark side? Like Remus? Or the one I don’t know,” Thomas says. “The last side.”   
  
“Yes,” Roman confirms. “To have either of those two fronting would be quite a disaster. Who knows what would happen? Though, I’m not sure calling him the ‘last side’ is quite accurate. We sides aren’t quite finite. We come and go, merging into each other and manifesting when an emotion or experience gets too strong.”   
  
“Such a tragedy that Remy integrated,” Deceit smiles. “His unparalleled sass is _truly_ missed.”   
  
”Hey, I inherited that sass! And the perchance for beauty sleep. It’s not my fault Patton got the tendency to wander off, though. I didn’t choose which parts of him I got. Or that Virgil got his resistance to authority.”   
  
“ _Right_ ,” Deceit says, rolling his eyes. “Not to mention an affinity for insomnia. Not to mention _Missy_.”   
  
“Yes, Thomas, there’s a number of sides you never even knew! Ones that mixed in with the ones you know and love, ones that made peace with you and mixed directly with you. There’s even some that got up and walked away,” Roman exclaims, waving at the window out to the blank white abyss.   
  
“Woah, so you _can_ go out there?” Thomas asks, looking out again. In such a vast expanse of nothingness, Thomas wonders what could be out there. Or if anything is out there at all.   
  
“Sure. Virgil took a hike out there when he went missing, don’t you remember? We called him back by breaking into his room. Kind of baited him into returning, really.”   
  
“What’d he see out there?”   
  
Roman shrugs. “I dunno. You’d have to ask him. He’s the only one that’s ever come back.”   
  
“Wow,” Thomas mutters.   
  
“ _Clearly_ the best course of action is watching what Virgil’s every move. Thomas has every reason to watch this for hours on end,” Deceit remarks after a silence. “Thomas shouldn’t find a place to rest upstairs.”   
  
“Ehh,” Roman grumbles. “Deceit’s right. Thomas, there’s no point in watching Virge like a hawk. As emo as he is, he’d never let any harm come your body.”   
  
“Don’t you mean ‘the body’?” Thomas asks. “It kind of belongs to all of us.”   
  
“Sure, let’s start shared ownership. We’ll all take turns fronting every day. How about we make a schedule for who gets what time? I’m sure all your friends will love seeing you one-eighth of the time. _Great_ idea, Thomas,” Deceit mockingly praises in a flat tone.   
  
“Oh, shut up, Deceit. I may be the host, but I’m not the only one here. So it’s the body, okay?” Thomas snaps.   
  
Deceit raises his hands innocently. “Of course.”   
  
Roman huffs. “Come on, Thomas. We’ll see if your bedroom’s popped in upstairs.”   
  
“Sure,” Thomas agrees. Anything to get away from that Debbie Downer.

* * *

Around the time they finish ‘moving in’ (read: reconstructing Thomas’s bedroom in the new and previously non-existent third floor of the Mind Palace), Virgil knocks on Thomas’s doorframe and leans on it to poke his head in.

  
“It’s your first time conscious in the Mind Palace without meaning to pop up?” Virgil asks from the doorway, a smirk on his lips. “Welcome to the club.”   
  
“Hey Virge,” Thomas greets. He’s sitting against his headboard while Roman sits in a newly-constructed cushioned seat under the window of his not-real bedroom. “Who’d you swap with?”   
  
“Patton. He wanted to check out the new Queer Eye season anyway, so I handed it off. You can take over if you want,” Virgil adds quickly.   
  
“No, he can watch for a while. I’m okay here. This place is weird. It’s like a copy of my real bedroom. Except I know it’s not. I mean, look out the window.”   
  
They all do. It’s blinding white out there, as though they’re inside a painting and nobody bothered to paint a background outside. Pure blank canvas.   
  
“I can change the light if you want,” Roman offers. He raises a hand into the air and pulls on it like he’s dragging something slowly down (a lever, maybe). The light that comes through the window warps, suddenly appearing like sunset lighting despite it coming from the same white blank expanse. The color quite literally bends under Roman’s pull.   
  
Virgil chuckles quietly. “Nice party trick. Of course, I just don’t have windows. Problem solved.”   
  
“Or, Thomas, it can look however you want! Look, look look,” exclaims Roman. He snaps his fingers and at his whim, the blank white expanse shifts to a mossy, tranquil waterfall in the forest. He snaps again and it’s replaced with a gently howling snowstorm, complete with the blurry outline of pine trees in the dark obscured by the snowfall. Another snap and the window looks out over a painted desert from above, as if the room is perched upon the edge of some fantastical and endless Grand Canyon-esque landscape. “Anything you like!”   
  
Virgil grunts and reaches out, slamming his palm on Thomas’s wall which ripples as if it were made of water. Half a second after he does, the ripples reach the window, which reverts back to blank white nothing. “Or you can keep it how it really is, just for a reality check. We don’t want you to lose your sense for the real world versus the Mind Palace.”   
  
“Or I could help with that. Adding or changing your furniture in here so you can know at a glance if it’s real-life or not? I don’t think your powers in here can change interior design layouts— and even if they can, they can’t do it yet,” Roman admits. “But you could always ask me to do it for you. Or we could fuse! Do it together!”   
  
Thomas laughs. “Thanks, Roman, but I’m good for now. One step out that door and I won’t be in my hall, I’ll be heading down a staircase to a big studio room that doesn’t really exist. That’s a big enough reality check for me. It’s not like this is Inception and I need a totem or anything.”   
  
“Suit yourself,” Virgil nods. “But even if Roman does redecorate for you, you could have Deceit delete stuff you don’t want to keep. He’s the only one who can clear up people’s messes that easy.”   
  
“Censoring’s his thing, I gotcha. Really, Roman, you don’t have to do anything, though,” Thomas assures. “I don’t think I’ll need reality checks just yet.”   
  
“Fair enough. I’m just offering that Romas could design you the perfect room,” Roman says.   
  
Thomas laughs. “You know, I don’t think I ever understood why Steven didn’t jump to fuse with all of the Crystal Gems after Smoky Quartz appeared. They were his family. Why didn’t he want to fuse with all of them as soon as he could? I mean… I get it now. It’s a lot to be… that open with someone. Even when you do live with them.”   
  
“Indeed,” Roman says.   
  
“Yeah,” Virgil nods. “Nobody’ll hold it against you if you wait to fuse again. Not even me. You went from being fairly carefree in your life to very concerned about absolutely everything. Nothing’s really certain right now, and nobody’s expecting you to jump out of your comfort zone.”   
  
“Thanks, guys,” Thomas says, closing his eyes and breathing out a relaxed sigh. He really is glad that these are the people he’s sharing his head with. 

* * *

His therapist isn’t huge on making jumps to diagnoses.  
  
That’s something that Thomas is increasingly grateful for, these days. Logan’s been cramming research in whenever he can, and he’s found a lot of really strange and frankly terrifying things that can legally happen to people with identity disorders. The legitimate horror stories come from decades-old accounts of people labelled crazy and locked up for life. There’s a ton reports online of people who claim their families taking legal action to restrain their freedom. He admits that a lot of these people - systems, as they call themselves - seem to be doing much worse than himself in terms of objective mental health; it’s hard to come across stories that don’t mention trauma concerning various types of abuse or seriously endangering actions such as suicide attempts. All of that makes it very easy for him to see why there might be a strong precedent for declaring people with DID as a danger to themselves.   
  
The stories add up into one big realization: having an official diagnosis on a legal record is very damning for claims of sanity.   
  
He’s looked at the Americans With Disabilities Act, which looks like it could protect his legal rights pretty well if he does end up with a diagnosis of DID. Then again, Logan regularly reminds him that the average time sent in the mental health system waiting for a diagnosis in the first place in the US is seven years. (To which Patton brings up that it’s been over a decade since Thomas’s anxiety was diagnosed, and longer still that they’ve been around at all.)   
  
“I’d like you to take a look at this pamphlet,” his therapist says gently. She hands over a shiny set of pages folded up into a neat tiny book held together with staples. It has a title page with big letters spelling out something he’s been dreading and hoping for for a while now.

>   
>  **DIAGNOSTIC TOOLS FOR DID**

  
“As far as definitive labels go, this is what I believe would be the most apt description,” she says. “You came to me with your suspicions, and it’s become very clear to me that your experience is something you perceive and describe very vividly. We’ve had a little less than half a year to document your experiences and speak about how your daily life is being affected, and I believe we’re coming to a point where it would be beneficial for you to be able to put a name to your condition. There’s a few options you’ll find in this pamphlet pertaining to screening tools and tests. The first few obvious ones to take would be the SQD-20 and the DES. Assuming you receive results from those that continue pointing to Dissociative Identity Disorder, you’d move on to the MID test by Paul Dell, or perhaps the SCID-D-R by Marlene Steinberg. Those are the diagnostic tests.”   
  
Thomas’s breath catches. “Okay. I thought… I always thought it would take longer. To get a diagnosis.”   
  
“I don’t believe you have reason to be concerned,” she assures. “You’re a fairly high functioning individual, given your anxiety and your internal conflicts. In your case, I wouldn’t put much worry into what a diagnosis means legally. Even so, from my end I’m completely willing to keep any diagnosis you might receive from tests conducted by a clinical physician off your official medical record.”   
  
“So you’re saying I could get a diagnosis under a fake ID just to be sure I have it, but not risk anything legally,” Thomas mumbles.   
  
“Precisely.”   
  
“But you think it is DID? Not OSDD?”   
  
“Yes, I do believe that. Your alters certainly exist; I’ve observed them myself. They’re fairly distinctive individuals who show a lot of personality when they’re not pretending to be you. And, clearly, your amnesia occurs enough for you to warrant attending therapy. Of course, you’d have to take the tests to get an official result. If that matters to you, that is. I’m completely willing to continue therapy without a diagnosis.”   
  
“Okay,” Thomas nods. “This is a lot to think about. My head’s kind of spinning. Figuratively.”   
  
“Are any of your sides saying anything?” she asks.   
  
“No. They’re listening,” Thomas mutters. “Most of them anyway. They’ll be fighting the minute I leave, but they know to let me concentrate.”   
  
“Take as much time to consider your options as you need, Thomas.”   
  
“Thank you.”


	6. nitrogen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry, oh my fucking god  
> 

Before this whole thing, his idea of autonomy was pretty different.   
  
Autonomy was choosing what to do and doing it because you’re free to do what you choose to do. Autonomy was, in that sense, freedom.   
  
But now he owes autonomy to the others. Or, perhaps, he always owed it to them, and they’ve collectively realized that it’s okay for him to give it to them. They’re beings who are separate from him on some substantial level, and so he knows that they deserve to have time to inhabit a living body in real society instead of staying cooped up in an entirely isolated world. Now, things are real. Now, everything is real.   
  
“Do you believe in autonomy?” Thomas asks into the kitchen of the Mind Palace, where Patton is flipping pancakes. Logan’s in control of the body right now.   
  
“What do you mean, sport?” Patton asks.   
  
“I mean, like, free will. Do you believe it really exists?”   
  
“Well, yeah. I do. Free will gives us the amazing power to change how things are! Sometimes, we need that hope that we can make a difference so that we don’t just give up when situations get tough. Even if our control over the situation is limited, I think we have no choice but to believe that we have a choice.”   
  
Thomas laughs tiredly, scrubbing his face with his hands. “That doesn’t make sense, Pat.”   
  
“Do you feel like you don’t have free will?” Patton asks quietly.   
  
Thomas sighs. “I want to believe I do. And I know that the choices I make matter, even if there is some cosmic destiny or obligation I have to make certain choices. But I’m finding it… harder to tell if you guys truly have free will. Your minds may be autonomous, but if you can’t decide when to be in the physical world whenever you want, are you really free?”   
  
“Sure we are,” Patton says. “Our whole lives have been lived in your mind. We’ve done just fine so far.”   
  
“Just because that’s the way it is doesn’t mean it’s right,” Thomas exclaims.   
  
“This is your life. We’ve always known that. We exist to help you— that should be clearer now more than ever,” Patton says. “I’m not sure about the science of it all. But I do know that alters only get made when the host needs them.”   
  
“But some hosts stop being the host! Because originally, we were all ‘Thomas’. It’s not your fault that when— that when whatever-it-was happened, you got a smaller part of the consciousness.”   
  
“We’re here to help you, though,” Patton says emphatically. “You’re the host. And we don’t mind!”   
  
“Some of you don’t,” Thomas mutters.   
  
“None of us do,” Patton says with more conviction than Thomas has heard in a long while.   
  
He pauses, looking at Patton and the serious frown he’s wearing. Thomas chuckles sadly, covering his face with his hand. “How can you be so sure? You’re all so different. We’ve had a dozen arguments debating what I should do with my life. How can you be so sure that none of you just want to have a life of your own?”   
  
“Because we don’t. When we talk like that, it’s because that’s how we want your life to be. Even the Dark Sides don’t want to call the shots!”   
  
“But if you could have your own lives?”   
  
“We can’t, buddy. We just can’t.”   
  
“What if I tried to let you?”   
  
“You can’t live like that,” Patton sighs. “It’s nice to be in the real world, I’ll give you that. To know that we can make choices when we’re in your body. To know that we’re doing things that make an impact, that affect the world, even if it’s just ordering coffee on our own. But you can’t split your life into neat, tidy time slots for all of us. Nobody can be that many people. Especially when we’re all you.”   
  
“You’re not, though,” Thomas says. “That’s what I’m getting at! What if you weren’t trapped in my head? Wouldn’t that make you happy?”   
  
“We can’t.”   
  
“But if you could?”   
  
Patton crosses his arms. “Some of us might like that.”   
  
“Exactly.”   
  
“This isn’t something we can do, though, Thomas,” Patton sighs. “Kiddo… there’s a reason Rose Quartz chose to be Steven.”   
  
“You’re saying that you’re living vicariously through me?” Thomas asks.   
  
“Yes, I am.”   
  
“But you don’t have to! I could do better. You don’t have to—“   
  
“Thomas. None of us blame you.”   
  
Thomas halts the speech he’d been working up to. He drops his head into his arms on top of the table. This whole thing - this diagnosis - has been eating at him for days he knows he needs to act on it, somehow. But he needs to figure himself (and his sides) out before he can take the case to anyone else. He’s sure about that. Pretty sure, anyway. But the problem is, nobody will let him seriously discuss it. Everyone’s been saying that he should take it up with the others first, but everyone’s evasive and moody anyway. He almost pinned Logan down yesterday, but he realizes that when it comes to feelings talks, he needs to go to Patton if he’s ever going to make progress.   
  
Except, Patton isn’t cooperating.   
  
“Do I at least get to say ‘Why won’t you let me do this for you, Rose?’” Thomas asks.   
  
Patton flips the last pancake over onto the plate, making a whole six-stack of them. “Well, you could. But that doesn’t play out in your favor, because the context of that line was Pearl trying to be overly self-sacrificial. Which is exactly what I’m trying to tell you.”   
  
“Profound.”   
  
“No. True,” Patton corrects. He turns off the stove and brings the plate of pancakes over to Thomas. “Kiddo, most people don’t have enough time in the day in general. You don’t need to commit to giving us part of your day.”   
  
“So, what’s the game plan? I stay behind the wheel forever, and you stay the voices in my head?” Thomas asks.   
  
“Maybe there’s a happy medium,” Patton says. “We can pop in to give you breaks when you don’t want to do this or that. And then, when we really feel cooped up or want to do something, we can ask to swap. Of course, there will always be accidents where we swap without wanting to. Logan won’t be able to accurately control who fronts one-hundred percent of the time anyway. What I’m saying is, we aren’t locked in here. We’ll find ways to experience the physical world on our own with time.”   
  
Thomas sighs and nods. Patton’s right; he can’t do much more than that. He would love to give them bodies so they could live out their lives, but that’s not scientifically or practically possible. All he can do is make the best of it and manage with what he has.   
  
“We’ll be okay, kiddo,” Patton says, pulling Thomas in for a hug.   
  
Before he can even think otherwise, Thomas finds himself relaxing into it and hugging back. “Thanks, Pat,” he mutters quietly.

* * *

  
  
Thomas jerks awake on a Thursday feeling that something’s gone.   
  
It’s not clairvoyance. It’s a niggling hunch in the back of his mind that stems from both an uneasiness in his stomach and the distant, familiar whispers he hears in his head.   
  
And usually, it’s pretty rude to interrupt a conversation you haven’t been invited to, Thomas thinks. But usually, he doesn’t have a looming feeling of terrible creeping dread either. As a compromise, he tries to listen in as he sits up in his bed, closing his eyes to focus on the audio inputs.   
  
Even then, he can barely make out the voices. He can only identify one, because it’s Roman, because Roman’s cadence rises and falls in his sentences as he emphasizes certain words.   
  
“H’llo?” Thomas calls to his sides. His voice is groggy with sleep, so he sits up and clears his throat. “Guys?”   
  
“Thomas? Is that you?” Roman’s voice asks much more clearly.

  
“Thanks be,” Logan’s voice follows. “Patton, would you mind… alright. Thomas, if you would switch with Patton?”   
  
“Uh, sure,” Thomas mutters. His eyes flutter closed and he pauses, listening to white noise until it’s interrupted by rustling. Quickly, he opens his eyes. Instead of sitting in a pool of blankets in his bed, he’s sitting in a pool of blankets on a couch. The one in the loft of Mind Palace. He sees the four walls with the doorways to the rooms of each of the sides, and the hallway that leads to the stairs. Logan and Roman face each in the center of the room, bickering quietly and indistinctly.   
  
“Thank the stars, Thomas. I thought you’d never get here,” Roman says, marching up and pulling at Thomas’s arm until he stands up.   
  
“It’s a good thing you’ve arrived,” Logan nods.   
  
“It’s a good thing  _ Patton’s gone _ ! He’s been ugly sobbing non-stop!”   
  
Thomas frowns. “I don’t get it— what’s happening?”   
  
“Deceit has vacated the Mind Palace,” Logan deadpans.   
  
Thomas blanches.   
  
Roman shakes his head, shoulders drawn tight. “It wouldn’t be so bad if he’d done it a month or three ago— when he began living up here? He could have slipped away! But now I— I mean. Now we’ve gotten attached. We let ourselves be duped by that slippery snake one too many times! He played the long con and the others fell for it—“   
  
“You seemed to be growing awfully close to him as well; don’t act as if you weren’t complicit in his integration,” Logan corrected. “You’re just as upset as the other two, if not more so—“   
  
“And you’re not above it either! I know you were just getting used to your puzzles and quips with him. Mind-challenge loving, intellectual, paradox-spouting tricksters the both of you! You know, you talk quite a talk about ‘falsehoods’ when you love twisting your words to end up on the right side of things just as much as he does. Only difference is, at least he owns up to the manipulation—“   
  
“Owned. He’s gone, have some respect.”   
  
“Pardon me, did he die? I didn’t get a funeral invitation. I was under the impression he just walked out the door.”   
  
“Explain to me what the difference is. From my perspective, it seems that’s nearly the same thing—“   
  
“Guys!” Thomas shouts, stepping between them. He glances each of the two in the eye before sighing in disappointment. “You’re clearly both upset. Logan, I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen you get riled up so quickly…”   
  
Logan scoffs.   
  
“Now’s not the time to be macho about it all. That goes for you too, Princey,” Thomas says sharply. They both avoid his eyes. “How’s Patton holding up?”   
  
Roman tuts. “Not fantastic, my dear Thomas. He’s probably crying over a box of tissues in your body right now. But it’s the kind of sad that’ll bounce back once he processes everything. He’ll be right as rain in a couple of days. I think. We’ll see.”   
  
“And Virgil? Where is he?”   
  
Logan and Roman are quiet before Logan mutters, “downstairs”.   
  
A feeling settles in Thomas’s gut at this moment. Their sudden quiet is the strongest possible indicator that something is terribly wrong with Virgil. Without a second thought, his feet are carrying him down the stairs to the entrance of the living room. He takes the stairs as fast as he can without risking tripping over his feet, and rounds the corner to take in the scene. Virgil sits curled over the edge of the dining table with his back to the Thomas, elbows resting on the wood and holding a tiny paper note in his hands. His hoodie is pulled up over his head, drawstrings drawn tight in the way Thomas knows he does to block out noise.   
  
“Virge?”   
  
Virgil’s head turns slightly, like he was going to look at Thomas but lost his motivation once he registered who’d spoken.   
  
Slowly, Thomas takes a few steps forward and carefully sits at the table beside Virgil. “Hey, there.”   
  
“He—“ Virgil’s voice is echo-ey, so he pauses and clears his throat. When he restarts, it’s just scratchy. “He uh, left this.”   
  
Thomas glances down and takes the paper gently from Virgil’s fingers. “Thanks,” he says quietly. He’s afraid that getting upset will hurt Virgil even more, so when he reads the paper, he’s careful to control his face.   
  
Headed out.   
It’s time he tells them.   
  
The second he reads it, he knows it’s from Deceit. “He didn’t leave much.”   
  
“He left us,” Virgil whispers.   
  
Thomas swallows. Huffs out a breath, glancing around the room. Then, maybe a little firmer than he needs to, he presses the paper back onto the table. Virgil flinches, looking up. He grabs for the paper and pulls it to his chest protectively. He meets Thomas’s stare, and perhaps he sees the scrutiny Thomas had tried to stifle, because his lip wobbles.   
  
“I don’t expect you to understand,” he says. “He was always convoluted, and often unkind, and sometimes cruel. I know that’s true, but you don’t know what he’s done for us. When things went bad for you, he was the one who kept all the hurt. Almost all of it, just to himself. That kind of weight breaks a person, Thomas. It would’ve broken you. That’s why we’re here, why he— I know… I’ve told you a million times lies are dangerous. Bad. That lying to yourself and others is dangerous. And he was— Dee was dangerous. I know.”   
  
“He’s more than that,” Thomas whispers. “I’m done pretending like you guys aren’t real people just so I don’t have to admit I was wrong. No matter how it seems to other people. This is… it’s my mind. There’s no difference for me between what’s technically real and what I experience. My perception of life is really all that matters for us. Perception is reality. And you guys are a part of that now. I have to face the facts and recognize you as individuals. Deceit was more than an impulse to lie, even if that’s what his function was.”   
  
Virgil sniffles and rubs his fingers over the edges of the paper.   
  
Thomas bites his lip. “Where did he go? What’s out there, Virge?”   
  
“It’s…”   
  
Thomas waits, because he can’t push Virgil. Not today.   
  
Virgil pulls his hood’s sides to loosen the tightly-drawn string before dropping the entire hood down to rest on his shoulders. His hands are shaking as he rubs them against his mouth. “Out there it’s… you can’t imagine. I can’t possibly describe it well.”   
  
When Virgil fails to continue, Thomas glances at the kitchen window. “If you can’t describe, then should I go an—?“   
  
“No!” Virgil shouts. His hand juts out and grips one of Thomas’s wrists, even though he wasn’t moving. And his voice — even that one short command was said with a dozen gravelly, demonic, upset voices.   
  
“Okay,” Thomas assures, placing his free hand over Virgil’s tight (painful) hold. “Okay, I won’t go outside. Virge, I’m not going. It’s okay.”   
  
“Good,” Virgil says definitively. “Don’t. Ever. Not you. None of us could take your place. You can’t leave us; we’re not meant to do that. If you ever got lost— Thomas, promise me you won’t.”   
  
“I won’t, I promise,” Thomas says.   
  
It takes another slow second of being inspected by Virgil’s critical eye, but then it passes and Virgil relaxes marginally. And then, he sighs and lets go of Thomas’s wrist. “I’m… actually, I’m not really sorry for that. You can’t go.”   
  
Thomas lets Virgil take a few more breaths to calm down before he folds his hands together. “So, since I’m not going out there myself, could you fill me in? I still don’t know what’s out there.”   
  
“Nothing’s out there,” Virgil says, but he hesitates. “Well, rather, you couldn’t find anything out there. I don’t really know how to explain it right, but imagine… imagine you’re blindfolded in a big empty room, and you think there might be a few people blindfolded out there too, but how could you ever find them? Or maybe they found a way out of the room. Only out there, you’re not really blindfolded. The void is just so big, you might as well be. The chances of bumping into someone… if they’re even out there…”   
  
Thomas swallows and nods. This is the stuff of nightmares. He should have expected Virgil to be capable of describing it in a terrifying way, but he gets the feeling this is more than a scare tactic. This is a caution.   
  
“It’s infinite. You can’t begin to comprehend how expansive it is. You just get lost in your mind alone. Imagining. Or walking. Or just being.”   
  
“Is it scary to be out there?”   
  
“If you let it be. If being alone scares you.”   
  
“You’re the first one to ever come back, right?” Thomas asks. “Maybe we need to find Deceit and bring him back like we brought you back.”   
  
“No,” Virgil mutters. “I came back by choice. Basically because you guys tripped my home alarm system. I felt this… pull, and I knew that if I felt for it, I had this internal compass pointing to home. A beacon. A way-point. I knew you guys were… and I chose to get some closure, which ended up…“   
  
Slowly, Thomas nods. “But Deceit chose to go. He left a note.”   
  
“I doubt he’d listen even if we broke into his room and trashed the place. He’s gone.”   
  
He says nothing in response. He doesn’t even know what he can say.   
  
“You have to tell them,” Virgil says as he buries his face in his palms. “Him being gone means more than you think it does. It means he’s not going to wipe the system again. He’s made you forget things about us before, and he could do it again. But he left for a reason. He left, and now it’s time.”   
  
“Okay. I’ll tell them,” Thomas says. “But you guys have to stay put when I do. No taking over and running away.”   
  
Virgil bites his lip. “If they don’t threaten you, I won’t.”   
  
“They wouldn’t.”   
  
“We’ll see,” Virgil says. He bites his lip. “We’ll see, Thomas. Either way, it needs to be done.”   
  
“Alright.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao was it worth the wait?  
> (Again, sorry. Last chapter coming soon, it's been written for a while.)


End file.
